The Ukrainian Prosecutor’s General Office has enough evidence to charge jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the 1996 murder of prominent politician Yevhen Shcherban, First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said on Tuesday.
“We have sufficient proof to charge her with organizing and funding the killing,” he said.
She will be charged when she is well and can be subjected to investigation, the official said.
Investigators will soon be able to question her, he added.
A former Ukrainian security officer claimed last Monday to possess a covertly recorded tape implicating Tymoshenko.
The tapes, allegedly recorded in the offices of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, suggest that Tymoshenko paid for the murder, Mykola Melnychenko told a news conference in Washington two weeks ago.
Melnychenko said he is willing to hand the tapes over to prosecutors.
Tymoshenko has dismissed any link with the murder.
The heroine of Ukraine's West-leaning 2004 Orange revolution was jailed for seven years in October last year for overstepping her authority as prime minister in signing a 2009 gas deal with Russia, in what she described as a case of political persecution.
Former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who is named in the tapes as organizer of the killing, has previously said he had "nothing to do with that crime."
Shcherban, an influential businessman, was shot dead with his wife at an airport in eastern Ukraine.
