Investigative actions in the case of the killing of MP Yevhen Scherban in 1996, in which former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is charged with organizing the murder, were suspended in connection with the need to perform actions under international legal orders, but the investigation has already resumed.

"The order to suspend the investigation is dated April 26, while the investigation was renewed by an order dated May 13," the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.

"Ukrainian laws - the Criminal Procedure Code - strictly regulate investigation periods in criminal cases. Therefore, lawmakers envisaged the possibility of a suspended investigation pursuant to Article 280 of the Criminal Procedure Code. For instance, that is done when international legal cooperation procedures need to be accomplished," he said.

International legal orders were sent to several countries in the course of the Scherban case investigation, the source stressed.

"That is why the detective has suspended investigative procedures," he said.

The detective resumed the inquiry on May 13 due to the upcoming investigative procedures, he said.

Suspension of the Scherban case investigation was purely technical and had no effect on the essence of the inquiry. The Prosecutor General's Office suspended the inquiry in order to not waste time assigned by the Criminal Procedure Code for investigative procedures while international legal orders were being fulfilled.

Earlier on Monday, the ex-premier's defense counsel, Serhiy Vlasenko, said that the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine stopped the investigation into Scherban's case.

At the same time, the Ukrainska Pravda Web site reported that the investigation into the case was suspended in connection with Kyiv's request for legal assistance from the Czech Republic and the United States, which was not granted. The investigators most likely requested the interrogation of the ex-premier's husband, Oleksandr Tymoshenko, and former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, whom the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has been unsuccessfully trying to interrogate for several years.

In addition, the Ukrainska Pravda Web site said that Ukraine's First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin left for Germany to hold meetings on Tymoshenko's case. His press conference on Scherban's case was scheduled in Berlin for May 14, but was later canceled.