KIEV, Nov. 28 - The men who gunned down Ukrainian parliamentarian Yevhen Scherban in 1996 received the payment for this contract killing from firms controlled at the time by then-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and then-head of United Energy System of Ukraine (UESU) Yulia Tymoshenko, First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said.

"The money, nearly three million hryvnias, came to the killers' [bank] accounts from firms belonging to Lazarenko and Tymoshenko. The firms were controlled by these two people," Kuzmin said on the Inter television channel.

A witness questioned under a criminal case against Lazarenko by prosecutor Marta Borsch said he new that Shcherban's killing was "ordered by Prime Minister Lazarenko, and the money for the parliamentarian's killing was transferred from Tymoshenko's and Lazarenko's accounts."