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Russian prosecutors accuse former deputy prime minister of violating customs

tigation into allegations that former Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko gave bribes.
Tymoshenko oversaw the energy sector in Ukraine's Cabinet until her ouster early this year. Ukrainian officials arrested her in February on corruption charges, but Tymoshenko was freed in March after a judge decided she was in poor health and prosecutors couldn't justify holding her.
Responding to the fresh charges at a hastily arranged press conference in Kyiv Aug. 8, Tymoshenko called the allegations an attempt to weaken Ukraine's political opposition in the run up to parliamentary elections scheduled for March.
"I'm sure Kuchma will return the favor by ceding Ukrainian political and economic interests," Interfax-Ukraine quoted Tymoshenko as saying.
"It's amazing [Russian officials] are betting for the third time on a political corpse, on a politician with no potential at home or abroad," said Tymoshenko, accusing Russia of catering to Kuchma. "If this situation persists, the possibility of achieving a long-term stable relationship with Russia is remote," she added.
Opposition leaders across the Ukraine's political spectrum, including Reforms and Order parliament deputy Taras Chornovil and Ukraine Without Kuchma leader Yury Lutsenko, rallied to Tymoshenko's defense, saying it was high time for Ukraine's law enforcement agencies to stop selectively investigating Kuchma's critics and start solving crimes.
"The fabrication of the case against Tymoshenko can be viewed as a clear signal that Russia has begun living up to its part of the bargain, under which Moscow will receive carte blanche over Ukraine's economy while Kuchma attacks an opposition movement led by Tymoshenko," read a press release issued on Aug. 8 by Tymoshenko's Fatherland Party.
According to Russian state television NTV, Russian police have turned over to Ukrainian prosecutors information substantiating allegations that Tymoshenko and her husband, Oleksandr, could have violated customs laws when they failed to declare $100,000 in cash on a flight from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport to Dnipropetrovsk in 1995.
At the time, Tymoshenko headed a key energy supplier, Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine, which in the mid-1990s imported natural gas from Russia in exchange for local goods.
Russian prosecutors also say they have evidence of Tymoshenko's "complicity in bribe taking." He didn't say what the evidence was.
Elected to parliament in 1998, Tymoshenko formed the Fatherland faction in parliament before being tagged last year by former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko to clean up Ukraine's inefficient and corrupt energy sector.
She was dismissed in December.
Tymoshenko has not been bashful about calling for Kuchma's resignation. She recently took the lead of a new Ukrainian political movement hoping to garner seats in parliamentary elections in March.
The bloc, created last month, adopted the name of a coalition of opposition parties that staged months of street protests earlier this year, the National Salvation Forum.