Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the Batkivschyna party, has accused the authorities of persecuting her and her supporters.
"Unfortunately, the people who have come to power now are taking away the last possessions from the people and are passing this to shadow clans," Tymoshenko said.
"I have opposed and will always oppose this, and therefore attempts are being made to deal with me, as usual, by opening unfounded criminal cases," she said.
"I don’t fear these reprisals and will fight for Ukaine and for people’s rights as much as I can," Tymoshenko said on her official website in light of the outcomes of an international audit on her government’s activities to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office.
The current events in Ukraine signal a fight for a choice of the country’s future development, Tymoshenko said. "A fight is going on for what Ukraine will be like. It will be either a civilized, European, and democratic state in which the people’s rights and freedoms are protected, or it will be a corrupt state on the outskirts of global civilization, in which the people are destitute and deprived of the right to exist," she said.
It was reported earlier that Ukrainian Finance Minister Fedir Yaroshenko had said on Monday that the documents related to the audit of the Tymoshenko government’s activities had been passed to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office and the Verkhovna Rada. The audit conducted by Trout Cacheris PLLC has determined facts of inappropriate spending and obvious facts of abuses on the part of the previous government’s officials, individual ministers and private corporations and infliction of losses amounting to more than 3 billion hryvni in 2008-2009.
The same audit found that misappropriation of budget resources amounting to 50 billion hryvni has also been determined.
