December 10 2003, 10:46 APK-Inform

"Kozachenko case" came into deadlock - Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation

Members of Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation (UAC) consider that the criminal case, started against ex Deputy Prime Minister for Agriculture Leonid Kozachenko, has come to a dead end.

On the whole, since the start of the hearing of the criminal case there have been interrogated more than 10 witnesses for prosecution, while there are 517 witnesses on this case at total. The absurdity of the situation is that none of the interrogated witnesses has actually given any evidence, disclosing any criminal activities of L. Kozachenko in the period of his vice-premiership, the UAC press-service informed.

The most important witnesses for prosecution have not turned up at the hearing at all, while others have changed sides from prosecution for the defence party, the defendant's lawyers have said.

Overwhelming majority of the witnesses, though, have not arrived at court at all, a UAC spokesman was saying. It turned out to be that in many court's summons no date and time, for which the witness had been summoned to court, had been indicated at all. There were cases when witnesses got to know about their "absence" at the hearing from media reports, the spokesman said.

Also, there were multitudinous breaches on the part of General Prosecutor's Office officials in the course of witnesses' interrogation during the preliminary investigation. In particular, the Judge Angela Stryzhnevska expressed quite grounded discontent when it had turned to the surface that some of the witnesses had not been informed at a preliminary interrogation about criminal responsibility for untruthful evidence, and other similar mistreatments had occurred. Some of the interrogated people did not even know the cause of their being interrogated, the UAC spokesman said.

"The only conclusion, which is to be made now, is that neither representatives of General and City Prosecutors' Offices … nor the defence attorneys for L. Kozachenko, nor other participants of the hearings see any point in continuation of hearing of this case", the spokesman said.

Former Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister for Agriculture Leonid Kozachenko is being charged of power and office abuse, resulting in grave consequences, and in bribery in especially large scale.

According to UAC, the witnesses' interrogation is to last till December 10.