A parliamentary investigative team has charged Ukraine's former parliament speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko with mishandling more than Hr 50 million in legislative budget funds
3 million) in legislative budget funds.
Presenting its report to the Verkhovna Rada, the team recommended that the legislature ask the state prosecutor's office to look into their findings to determine whether a criminal case should be launched.
The investigative commission, initiated by center-right lawmakers, was formed last February after Tkachenko, a hard-liner, was ousted from his post by a newly formed majority alliance of largely pro-government legislators.
The team said Tkachenko either used the funds in question “irrationally,” or did not provide documents to justify various spending articles.
Some of the alleged violations concerned the lawmakers' foreign and domestic trips and payments for repairs to parliament offices and legislators' apartments, it said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Tkachenko dismissed the charges and said all budget funds provided to parliament were spent legally. He accused the commission of a “primitive approach to economic and financial activities.”
The ousted speaker also stressed he still considered himself a legitimate Rada leader and described the winter political crisis as a coup which benefitted his political rival, President Leonid Kuchma.
The prosecutor's office already has announced plans to resume a probe into tens of millions of dollars in credits that were allegedly misappropriated by an agrarian association once headed by the former speaker.
