Yet more witnesses testify in Yury Lutsenko’s favour

On Monday another two witnesses questioned over the charges against former Minister of Internal Affairs, Yury Lutsenko, stated that there had been no infringements in the allocation of a pension to Lutsenko’s driver, Leonid Prystuplyuk.

The fortieth witness, Volodymyr Yatsenko from the MIA personnel department denied having received any illegal instructions from Lutsenko. He said that he had checked the calculations for service years regarding Prystuplyuk’s pension, did not consider there was anything wrong with the document and said that he had acted in accordance with MIA normative documents.

The next witness, Olena Neshcheretna, from the Pension Department said that she had not received any instructions regarding allocation of a pension for Prystuplyuk.  She asserted that everything had been in full accordance with the law.

As reported, these two witnesses join many others who have testified that the procedure for the employment and benefits for Lutsenko’s driver were in full accordance with procedure and the law.  148 witnesses are to be called in all. 

From reports at Liga.net and Interfax-Ukraine

One of the alleged offences for which Lutsenko has been held in custody for 9 months is explained in the Legal Monitoring of the Danish Helsinki Committee on Human Rights. The driver in question is, of course, Leonid Prystuplyuk.

Articles 185.4, 191.5 and 365.3, excess of authority with grave consequences for in the period from 2005 to 2010 with the intention to inflict extra costs and losses to the State and in agreement with his driver to have facilitated the driver’s promotion to a series of police functions, respectively Operational Attorney, Police Captain and later Police Major and Minister Counselor, without the driver meeting the employment conditions or fulfilling these functions, and later to have prompted him awarded early enhanced pension, extension of pension seniority and assigned an official apartment which was reserved for other staff groups, by which he inflicted the state a total loss of approx. UAH 600, 000.

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