A witness in a criminal case on the murder of MP Yevhen Scherban, former Donetsk Regional Governor Volodymyr Scherban, has said that he could not previously inform law enforcement agencies about the involvement of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko in the murder, as he feared for his life.

An Interfax-Ukraine reporter said that during a cross-examination on Monday the ex-premier's lawyer, Oleksandr Plakhotniuk, asked Scherban why he did not apply to law enforcement agencies after Scherban's death if he had any information about it, and the witness replied: "I'm not so suicidal to come out to the square and shout out about who killed Scherban. I did not apply to police, because I knew that these would be my last words told in the law enforcement agencies."

The witness said that his friends from law enforcement agencies whom he trusted were no longer in office at that time, and he could not tell it to others.

"I repeat: I wanted to live," the witness said, addressing the defense team of the former prime minister.

The witness said he was convinced that he "would not have done anything" with his statement about Lazarenko's and Tymoshenko's involvement in the crime.

When asked why he had not made such a statement when Tymoshenko was in prison and Lazarenko was in the United States, he said: "I did not feel there was such situation in which anyone would listen to me... Before this [by 2012] nobody asked me about Scherban's murder," the witness said.

He said that after the criminal case was opened he was called in for questioning to the Prosecutor General's Office, where he testified.

The witness spoke about the conflict of interest between the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) Corporation, led by Tymoshenko, and the Industrial Union of Donbass (IUD) Corporation, which was headed by Scherban at that time.

Scherban, a member of the Liberal Party's executive committee and a Verkhovna Rada deputy, was shot and killed at Donetsk airport upon his arrival there from Moscow on November 3, 1996. The gunmen fled the scene by car. Scherban, his wife and a mechanic died on the spot from gunshot wounds. The plane's flight engineer died later in the hospital. The law enforcement at the time ruled out there being political motives behind the case.

The Luhansk Regional Court of Appeals sentenced Vadym Bolotskykh to life for Scherban's murder in April 2003.