Oleksandr Tymoshenko

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oleksander Tymoshenko is the husband of the current Ukrainian Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Oleksandr was the son of a mid-level Communist Party official. According to The Times, he met Yulia when he misdialed her number. He called back and they eventually agreed to meet and quickly fell in love. [1] They were married in 1979 in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, and have a daughter, Evgenia (b. 1980).

On August 18, 2000 Oleksandr, a board member of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) Corporation (of which Yulia was general director), was arrested along with the company's managing director, Valery Falkovich. He was charged with embezzling $800,000 in public funds and forging customs documents to import gas from Russia - all based on activities from the 1990s. The following March, he was transferred to a Zhytomyr oblast jail so as to avoid communication between Oleksandr, Falkovich (who was transferred to a Chernihiv jail at that time) and Yulia, who by that time was also under arrest. On August 8, 2001, Russian prosecutors handed over information to Ukrainian officials implicating Yulia and Oleksandr in customs violations. The following day, a Kyiv district court released Oleksandr and Falkovich due to lack of evidence.[2] The prosecutor's office, however, appealed the ruling and continued the case against Oleksandr, leading him to spend two years in hiding to avoid prosecution on charges he and his wife say are trumped up.[3] In another ruling, the Kyiv district court ruled the charges against Oleksandr "groundless."[4] Charges were finally dropped in May, 2002.

The couple appear together in public very rarely, leading some to suggest that the marriage is only a formal one.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Fairest Premier of Them All?" The Sunday Times, June 26, 2005, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article534324.ece>
  2. ^ "Ukrainian Energy Sector Officials Arrested on Embezzlement Charges," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Reports August 22, 2001 <http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2000/08/3-cee/cee-220800.asp>; "Yuliya Tymoshenko Faces Criminal Charges from Russia," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Reports August 14, 2001, <http://www.rferl.org/reports/pbureport/2001/08/30-140801.asp>
  3. ^ "Oleksandr Tymoshenko Put on Wanted List," The Kyiv Post, August 20, 2003; "Prosecutors Seek Oleksandr Tymoshenko," The Kyiv Post (August 28, 2003)
  4. ^ Taras Kuzio, "Ukraine Appoints new Prosecutor-General as Kuchma Targets Opposition," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Reports, August 22, 2002, <http://www.rferl.org/reports/pbureport/2002/08/29-060802.asp>