KIEV, July 10 - RAPSI. Kharkiv's Kievsky District Court postponed the hearing of the second criminal case against former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko until July 23 at the prosecution's request, Yulia Germanova, the press secretary of the Batkivshina opposition party's local branch, told RIA Novosti.

The prosecutor's office asked the court for a recess to allow experts time to complete Tymoshenko's medical appraisal.

The second criminal case against Tymoshenko concerns her term as the head of United Energy Systems of Ukraine in the mid-1990s. Tymoshenko is accused of tax evasion, embezzling state funds and forgery, which caused the country multimillion dollar losses.

A Kiev district court already sentenced Tymoshenko in October 2011 to seven years in prison for abuse of power in signing gas contracts between Ukraine's Naftogaz and Russia's Gazprom in 2009.

The judge declared that Tymoshenko abused her position as prime minister and issued directives regarding gas contract negotiations in Moscow which were poorly documented and lacked the government's consent.

Tymoshenko has been diagnosed with a spinal disc herniation.

German doctors have been treating her at a Kharkiv hospital since May 9.