Ukrainian Justice imposes bail of 650,000 euros on former Prime Minister Tymoshenko for corruption

The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine has imposed a bail of 33 million hryvnias (650,000 euros) on former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko to avoid going to prison for a case related to vote buying, in addition to other precautionary measures, such as the withdrawal of her passport or preventing her from leaving kyiv.

Timoshenko, leader of the opposition Patria party, has five days to deposit this amount. If she meets bail, she is obliged to report regularly to the authorities, to report any change of residence and not to communicate with the other deputies under investigation, reports the RBC agency.

Based on audio recordings, anti-corruption agencies accused Timoshenko of having bribed deputies from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party with up to $10,000 a month. “Parliamentarians were supposed to receive instructions on how to vote and how to abstain,” they noted.

Timoshenko, Ukraine’s prime minister briefly in 2005 and then between 2007 and 2010, has rejected the accusations and argued that the audio recordings have nothing to do with her. These recordings would record, for example, how he instructed several deputies to vote on a new series of appointments, such as those of the new Ministers of Defense and Energy.