© unknownUkraine's former Prime Minister and leading opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko
"Money has been transferred to the killers' bank accounts from firms owned by [former Prime Minister Pavel] Lazarenko and Tymoshenko," Russian news agency Ria Novosti quoted first deputy Chairman of the Prosecutor General's office Renat Kuzmin as saying on Saturday.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office previously said it was examining Tymoshenko's possible involvement in Yevgeny Shcherban's murder case.
Tymoshenko's spokeswoman Natalia Lysova has dismissed the accusations as "rubbish."
In November 1996, Shcherban, a member of Supreme Rada (Ukraine's Parliament) and chairman of the financial corporation Anton, was shot and killed along with his wife and an airport employee at the airport in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
Lazarenko, who was Tymoshenko's ally and served as Ukraine's prime minister in 1996-1997, has been charged with ordering the murder. He is currently imprisoned in the United States on charges of money laundering.
In October, a Ukrainian court sentenced Tymoshenko, who is Ukraine's leading opposition figure, to seven years in prison and banned her from political activities for three years over charges of abusing her power in signing a gas deal with Russia in 2009.
Tymoshenko has denied the allegations, saying the charges against her were politically motivated and that Ukraine has returned to the dark days of Stalin's rule.
I was unaware of the situation there until 2005 when I learned at an event that some of my church members had been involved in the "Orange Revolution" as mediators.
In places like the Ukraine, the struggle between established interests ("the oligarchy") and other groups is more openly talked about. The Communists remain active there, along with corporate, banking, and other external interests. The government seems to be a rats nest of factions, trying to tear each other apart with a combination of murderous intrigue and endless exchange of allegations of impropriety. A "popular" movement existed there, which seems to have been subsumed in its efforts to establish coalitions with other groups.
The only chance of telling whose story is more honest probably depends, as it does here in the US, of knowing which faction controls the media outlet releasing the given story.
In the US, where is is thought that the aging European oligarchy still controls all of our mainstream media channels, if someone is being pounded in the mainstream press, you can assume that they did something that the oligarchs didn't like.
As for this lady, the appearance is that either she or her supporters have indulged in criminal activity. That this is not unusual in politics does not seem to dull the enthusiasm of the various rival groups for accusing each other of such actions.