The questioning of Ukrainian businessman Vitaliy Haiduk as a witness in the case on the murder of MP Yevhen Scherban in 1996 will take place at 1000 on April 16, the defense lawyer of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Andriy Kozhemiakin, has said.

"As you know, there was a technical problem today. The sitting has been postponed until April 16," Kozhemiakin told reporters on Monday.

Investigative actions were to be conducted at Kyiv Court of Appeals on Monday as part of the probe into the murder of Scherban. Businessman Haiduk was to be questioned. However, it was reported on April 7 that the investigating judge was on sick leave and the court meeting was cancelled.

As reported, Yevhen Scherban, a member of the Liberal Party's executive committee and a Verkhovna Rada deputy, was shot dead at the Donetsk airport on his arrival 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. Law enforcement officers ruled out there being political motives behind the case.

In April 2003, the Court of Appeals of Luhansk region sentenced Vadym Bolotskykh to life imprisonment for Scherban's murder.

Scherban's son, Ruslan Scherban, a member of Donetsk Regional Council, said at a press conference on April 4, 2012 that he had passed to the Prosecutor General's Office documents indicating Tymoshenko's and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko's possible involvement in his father's murder.

Tymoshenko and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko have categorically denied being involved in the murder.

On January 18, 2013, Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said at a briefing that the Prosecutor General's Office had finished its investigation into the criminal case on the murder of MP Scherban and that Tymoshenko had been notified of being suspected of having organized the crime, along with Lazarenko. The article of the Criminal Code under which the notification was handed envisages life imprisonment. According to Pshonka, Tymoshenko and Lazarenko paid $2.8 million for Scherban to be killed.

In February-March 2013, three witnesses for the prosecution and one witness for the defense were interrogated in court as part of the pre-trial investigation into the Scherban murder case.

Tymoshenko did not attend either of the court hearings.