Lazarenko says criminal case against him will be put to rest after election

12:44

Former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko believes the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office won't seriously investigate a criminal case against him, no matter who ends up winning next year's presidential election.

"[This]case will be put to rest in Ukraine - irrespective of who wins the presidential election. The case against me was originally fabricated with a single aim – to guarantee victory to [Leonid] Kuchma in the 1999 presidential election," the former premier said in an interview posted on Thursday on the Web site of the Lazarenko-led Hromada Association. "All that is left is the political component of the so-called Lazarenko case," the ex-premier said.

Lazarenko said that the Prosecutor General’s Office found the accusations brought against him in 1999-2000 to be ludicrous, and the court absolved him of most of the charges.

Lazarenko was convicted in the United States of embezzling funds illegally received and transferring them to foreign accounts in 1994-1999. In 2004, a U.S. court dismissed a number of charges against Lazarenko, including all counts related to the corporation Unified Energy System of Ukraine, which was earlier headed by Ukrainian Premier Yulia Tymoshenko, and all charges related to the energy provider Itera. The official indictment retained the fraud charges related to the Naukova agricultural company and the extortion charges related to businessman Petro Kyrychenko's testimony.

A court in San Francisco sentenced Lazarenko to nine years in prison in August 2006.