KIEV, January 25 - RAPSI. According to Serhiy Vlasenko, a defense attorney of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the second criminal case against his client concerning her activities at the head of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) will be submitted to a Kharkiv court in several weeks.

The Ukrainian Security Service reported on the completion of a pretrial probe into the UESU case last Friday.

Vlasenko believes the Ukrainian authorities seek to increase Tymoshenko's sentence from 7 to 12 years in prison.

Vlasenko assumed that the hearing under the new trial may be held in the absence of Tymoshenko. "We have already seen that Tymoshenko was not brought to the court due to poor health," Vlasenko said.

Tymoshenko was sentenced in October to seven years in prison for abuse of power in signing gas contracts between Ukraine's Naftogaz and Russia's Gazprom in 2009. In late December she was taken to the Kharkiv penal colony. Soon after the sentence was passed the tax police resumed investigation into four criminal cases against Tymoshenko in connection to her activities as head of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine in the 1990s. In the UESU case Tymoshenko has been charged with attempted embezzlement of public funds, organizing a non-disclosure of foreign currency proceeds amounting to over $165 million, and tax evasion in the amount of over $5.8 million. The Ukrainian Security Service is investigating the cases which were consolidated into one.

The security service closed a criminal case regarding the concealment of currency proceeds on January 18 as the offence has been removed from the Criminal Code. Meanwhile, it will continue investigating Tymoshenko's other crimes.