Ivashchenko angered over falsified protocols

Former Acting Defence Minister in Yulia Tymoshenko’s government, Valery Ivashchenko who has been in detention since August 2010 has issued a statement via his lawyers. In it he asserts that the court examination of the criminal investigation material has revealed falsification by the Prosecutor General’s Office.

He maintains that from the moment the criminal investigation was initiated, the investigators asserted that Ivashchenko had committed a crime, not that he was suspected of having committed one. Thus his guilt was regarded as fact from the outset, and then they set out finding evidence. In doing so, he asserts, they falsified and manipulated material in order to compensate for the fact that there was no cause and effect link between him and the illegal activity involved, nor intent, etc. 

Valery Ivashchenko is charged with having, in November 2009 while Acting Minister of Defence abused his position by signing a plan to sell the Feodosia Marine Engineering Works which was property of the Ministry of Defence.  More details can be found in the Second Preliminary Report by the Danish Helsinki Committee on Human Rights, where Valery Ivashchenko’s case is one of those examined

Through such manipulations, Ivashchenko asserts, the investigators have made the crime indicted not the actual sale of the Engineering Works at too low a price, but the fact that he agreed a draft plan for the sale of the Works.

He notes too that after the investigative activities had been stopped for the period while an appeal was being considered against the decision to initiate criminal proceedings, the investigation in fact still continued.

He writes that there are protocols of questioning of his family and close ones who never gave testimony.

He says that he and his lawyers, as well as members of his family, have made numerous complaints about falsified documents to the Prosecutor General’s Office. None, he says, have got there but have instead been reviewed by precisely the Prosecutor’s bodies which his complaints are about.