JUST WEEKS after being jailed for abuse of power, Ukraine’s former prime minister and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is being investigated for involvement in the 1996 contract killing of a prominent politician.
Yevhen Shcherban was shot dead with his wife as they disembarked from an aircraft at Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine.
Rumours have persisted that Mr Shcherban was killed due to his rivalry with Pavlo Lazarenko, Ukraine’s prime minister at the time of the murder.
Shcherban was a leading member of the so-called Donetsk “clan” of businessmen and politicians, while Lazarenko was a key figure in a rival group from the city of Dnipropetrovsk.
According to Ukrainian prosecutor Renat Kuzmin: “We have interrogation transcripts of a US witness, who said directly that Shcherban’s murder was paid for from accounts of Lazarenko and Tymoshenko.
“We have those documents and intend to verify them.”
