The pre-trial investigation into the murder of MP Yevhen Scherban in 1996 has been suspended, Serhiy Vlasenko, a defense lawyer for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, has said.

"It was suspended by a resolution [of an investigator of the Prosecutor General's Office] of May 21," he told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

As reported, on April 26, an investigator of the Prosecutor General's Office signed a resolution suspending investigative measures in the case on the murder of MP Scherban in 1996, in which Tymoshenko is a suspect, duet the terms regulated by law and the need to conduct actions as part of international legal orders. However, the investigation resumed on May 13, and Petro Kyrychenko, a former assistant to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, was questioned as a witness in the case through a video conference from San Francisco (the United States) on May 15.

Later, First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said in an interview with Forbes Ukraine that other witnesses in the case would not be interrogated soon.