Gas Ambition Triggered Killing, Ukraine Court Hears

Former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko killed a lawmaker because he upset her plan for a monopoly on the gas trade, the country's top prosecutor said Tuesday.

News agencies reported the claims that the murder was planned to wrest control of the Donetsk gas market.

Tymoshenko ordered the killing of Yevhen Shcherban in 1996, RIA Novosti reported, citing documents from the Prosecutor General's Office in Kiev. 

Shcherban, a businessman and member of the Ukrainian parliament, and his wife were shot dead at an airport in eastern Ukraine in 1996.

Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka last week alleged that Tymoshenko and another former prime minister, Pavlo Lazarenko, ordered the killings.

The excerpted documents say the ex-prime ministers paid $2.82 million for the assassinations.

The documents allege that Shcherban had blocked a plan by United Energy Systems of Ukraine, which Tymoshenko headed, to become the exclusive gas trader in the Donetsk region.

Tymoshenko is already serving a seven-year sentence for abuse of authority. Her case is controversial, and the Kiev Post reported that her situation will be raised at a summit between Ukraine and the European Union next month. Her supporters accuse the government of persecution and "selective justice" in her case.