Criminal Convictions
On 15 December 1967, at the age of 17, Yanukovych was sentenced to three years incarceration for participating in a robbery and assault . The sentence was later reduced to 18 months as part of the amnesty announced in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. The court did not show Yanukovych clemency, a practice common for young, first-time offenders. At the court trial Yanukovych pleaded guilty and did not appeal his sentence even though he had the chance to do so at the expense of the state.
On 8 June 1970 he was convicted for a second time on charges of assault and was sentenced to two years of imprisonment. The verdict was not appealed. Decades later, Yanukovych characterized his arrests and incarceration as "errors of youth".
On 11 July 2005, the office of the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor charged Mr. Yanukovych with fraud stemming alleged irregularities in the way his convictions were expunged twenty years earlier. In 2006 the General Prosecutor of Ukraine closed the case due to lack of evidence. In 2006 a criminal charge was filed for the falsification of documents regarding the alleged quashing of Yanukovych's prior convictions after it was discovered that two documents had been forged. The signature of the judge in Yanukovych's case had also been forged as a charge of battery. The charge failed because all documentation regarding the conviction had been destroyed due to its expiry. However, there were no official records regarding the destruction of these documents.
On 29 January 2010 the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Oleksandr Medvedko claimed that Yanukovych was unlawfully jailed in his youth, which astonished the (then) Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko.
Read more about this topic: Viktor Yanukovych
Famous quotes containing the words criminal and/or convictions:
“The attorneys defending a criminal are rarely artists enough to turn the beautiful ghastliness of his deed to his advantage.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“No two people see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will often apply the same principle, recognized by both, differently. Even one and the same person won’t always maintain the same views and judgments: earlier convictions must give way to later ones.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)