Banker Tymonkin accepts invitation to talk to Ukrainian prosecutors in Germany, could sign plea deal - Matios
Ukrainian banker and former deputy chairman of the supervisory board of VETEK Borys Tymonkin who is suspected of participating in a criminal group headed by the founder of VETEK Serhiy Kurchenko in Ukraine could sign a plea deal with Ukrainian investigators, Ukraine's Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios has said.
"A message from the prosecution agencies of Germany has arrived. Germany's Public Prosecution Office agreed on the trip of representatives of [Ukraine's] Prosecutor General's Office to Germany where Mr. Tymonkin gave this consent to speak to the prosecution agencies. I will go. There is a chance that he will sign a plea deal with investigators and unmask the persons who gave orders," Matios said on Shuster Live Show late on Friday last week.
As reported, Ukraine's PGO put on an international wanted list Tymonkin on May 16, 2014. He is suspected of committing crime under Part 1 of Article 255 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – participation in a criminal group headed by Kurchenko.
Tymonkin was detained in Germany on June 14, 2015. On June 17, 2015, PGO said that documents to extradite Tymonkin to Ukraine are being prepared. Late July 2015 the German court released Tymonkin on bail.
In April 2016 it was reported that German prosecutors over the two years of an investigation into the case on money laundering failed to find evidence against Kurchenko, who was associated with former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.
"Within the framework of international legal assistance we exchanged information with the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine and Austria, as well as Switzerland and the Netherlands. However, this has not yet yielded concrete results that would allow to talk about sufficient evidence of a crime," an investigator of the Gera city prosecutor's office, who is in charge of Kurchenko's case, told journalists.
According to the information, the questioning of the key witness in the case, Tymonkin, who is expecting the decision on extradition from Germany to Ukraine, did not help law enforcers.
