KIEV, June 13 (RAPSI) - The Prosecutor General's Office has obtained enough evidence to charge former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko with the murder in 1996 of Evhen Shcherban, a prominent businessman and member of parliament. The agency is ready to present its evidence in court, announced Renat Kuzmin, First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine, in an interview to the Den newspaper published online.

"We are certain that there is sufficient evidence of Tymoshenko's involvement and we are ready to bring the charges to court and insist that Tymoshenko is the one who ordered the murder. There are no other motives. Tymoshenko is not an enemy of the prosecutor or me. I personally have no arguments with her," Kuzmin said.

Shcherban, the chief of the Aton financial corporation and a member of the parliament, was shot dead at Donetsk International Airport in November 1996. His wife and an airport employee were also killed.

The Prosecutor General's Office claims that the murder was ordered by former prime ministers Tymoshenko and Lazarenko. According to the investigators, Shcherban stood in the way of making United Energy Systems of Ukraine, which Tymoshenko headed at the time, the Donetsk Region's monopoly gas distributor.

The investigators claim that Tymoshenko and Lazarenko paid $2.8 million for Shcherban's murder. If Tymoshenko is found guilty as charged, she could be sentenced to life in prison.

Tymoshenko is currently serving a seven-year sentence in a penal colony in Kharkov for abuse of power when she signed a gas deal with Russia in 2009. Since May 2012, she has been undergoing treatment at a hospital in Kharkov. She is also charged with financial fraud, which is alleged to have taken place when she was head of United Energy Systems of Ukraine in the 1990s.