The High Administrative Court of Ukraine has eased the preventive measure imposed on Tymoshenko, lifting restrictions on her communication with MPs.
On Monday, 26 January, the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court partially changed the preventive measure for Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the Batkivshchyna party. The court lifted the ban on her travelling outside the Kyiv region and restrictions on communicating with 62 members of parliament, while leaving the bail at 33.3 million hryvnias.
The decision was made by a panel of judges chaired by Mykola Glotov, partially satisfying the defence's appeal. Tymoshenko's lawyers insisted on the complete cancellation of Judge Vitaliy Dubas's ruling of 16 January, which set bail and imposed a number of procedural restrictions.
The Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office also filed an appeal. Prosecutor Vitaliy Grechyshkin requested that the bail be increased to 50 million hryvnias and that electronic monitoring be applied to Tymoshenko, but the court did not uphold these requests.
NABU and SAP suspect Tymoshenko of attempting to bribe members of the Servant of the People faction as part of an organised group. According to the investigation, this involved offering payments of $5,000 per month for coordinated voting in the Verkhovna Rada. As evidence, detectives refer to audio recordings of conversations made in January.
Yulia Tymoshenko and her defence team reject these accusations, claiming that there is no evidence of money being transferred and insisting that the published recordings have been doctored. The defence team informed the court of the results of its own examination, which allegedly found signs of interference in the audio files. The leader of Batkivshchyna calls the case politically motivated and aimed at restricting the activities of her faction.
At the same time, on 21 January, the High Anti-Corruption Court seized Tymoshenko's cars, phones and computer equipment, as well as those of her family members. The court did not seize the funds in her bank accounts. Ten citizens paid bail for the politician, transferring between 180,000 and 8 million hryvnias.
NABU, SAP, HACC, Tymoshenko, Batkivshchyna
