Lazarenko claims innocence in Shcherban murder
KYIV, April 10 /UKRINFORM/. Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko said that he was not involved in the murder of MP Yevhen Shcherban in 1996. In his address to the press, which was spread on Monday by his lawyer Maryna Dolhopola, Lazarenko asked Shcherban's son Ruslan to refrain from such statements.
"Ruslan Shcherban should know that I do not have anything to do with the death of his father. I would call him and ask to be a worthy man, not a puppet in the hands of those people who now, by manipulating his filial status, are so shamefully and incompetently using him to throw away then," Lazarenko said.
Lazarenko said that he had never met with Shcherban in the presence of any of his children, since September 1995 to July 1997 he worked as first deputy prime minister and later prime minister of Ukraine, which means all his movements, contacts and appointments, especially outside the capital city, were clearly defined.
"Each trip was constantly accompanied and fixed by employees of the State Guard, regional departments of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs," he added.
According to Lazarenko, Ruslan Shcherban makes statements that are, first, contrary to what was said by him personally as a party to the proceedings in the court of Luhansk in 2002, and especially contrary to what his father said about his safety just before his tragic death.
"The son should have read his father's interview with Olha Burda, a journalist of the newspaper Business-Donbass, given at the end of October 1996. Burda's article under the heading Last Interview with Yevhen Shcherban, “There are a hundred thousand voters behind me,” gives a direct speech by Shcherban, where he unequivocally denies the existence of any conflict with the then head of government and, on the contrary, indicates the intentions of some forces to play off representatives of Dnipropetrovsk region against those of Donetsk," Lazarenko said.
As reported, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in her letter also denied allegations of involvement in the murder of Yevhen Shcherban.
