Yulia Tymoshenko was first ordered to appear at the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) on April 7, 2010 after being accused of spreading false information about the Constitutional Court’s review of the case on the formation of a parliamentary coalition. The case went no further - Yulia Tymoshenko’s claim that the Party of Regions was pressuring the Constitutional Court was never denied and the Court ruled in favor of the government and legitimized the illegal parliamentary majority and government.
She was summoned again on May 12, 2010 to be handed a copy of the resolution re-opening a criminal case against her for allegedly bribing Supreme Court judges. We remind you that this case was closed in May 2004 because of lack of evidence.
According to the website, that same day information was received that President Viktor Yanukovych had instructed the Prosecutor General’s Office to find any grounds to imprison Yulia Tymoshenko within 3-4 months.
"In every room of the Prosecutor General’s Offices they’re saying that Yanukovych personally instructed the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office to find any reason to put me in jail in the next three to four months," Yulia Tymoshenko told journalists on May 12, speaking in front of the central investigation department of the PGO in Kyiv.
The criminal persecution of Yulia Tymoshenko caused concern among the Batkivshchyna party’s European partners. "I am very concerned about the developments in Ukrainian politics after the recent Presidential elections. These negative developments have become systematic in nature and are threatening the rule of law and fundamental human rights and civil liberties. There are clear evidences of political manipulations of the criminal justice system from the side of the Ukrainian authorities aimed at intimidation and harassment of the opposition, where the old politically motivated case against Yulia Tymoshenko has just been opened," President of the European People's Party (EPP) Wilfried Martens said on May 14, 2010.
According to Tymoshenko, her political team is interfering with the new government’s plans to build a dictatorship and illegally privatize key state monopolies, particularly oil and gas production and transport, electricity generation and the aviation industry; and therefore Viktor Yanukovych is trying to ruin the Batkivshchyna party and its leader with the help of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
"It’s a shame that Yanukovych is beginning to talk with his political opponents through prison bars. I don’t think this will be to his benefit as a politician," Yulia Tymoshenko said on April 7 after her first visit to the Office of the Prosecutor General.
