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KIEV, Ukraine—Embattled former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko filed a suit in a U.S. court against a businessman close to President Viktor Yanukovych, going on the offensive overseas as she faces increasing pressure from three criminal probes at home.
In court papers, opposition leader Ms. Tymoshenko accused Dmytro Firtash and Swiss-registered gas trader RosUkrEnergo of "racketeering" and defrauding Ukrainians of a huge volume of natural gas by manipulating an international arbitration court ruling.
The suit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, is the latest round in an increasingly bitter standoff with Mr. Yanukovych, who narrowly defeated her in presidential elections last year. She is under investigation for alleged financial wrongdoings while in office from 2007 to 2010. Mr. Firtash is a gas trader and chemicals tycoon who is close to the president's inner circle.
Ms. Tymoshenko's accusations relate to a ruling by a Stockholm court last year that ordered Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz to transfer 12.1 billion cubic meters of gas to RosUkrEnergo, co-owned by Mr. Firtash and Russian energy giant Gazprom.
Naftogaz had appropriated 11 billion cubic meters of gas from the company in January 2009 as part of a deal struck by Ms. Tymoshenko with her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to remove RosUkrEnergo as the middleman in the countries' multibillion-dollar gas trade.
The class action suit was filed on under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act and the Aliens Tort Statute, which sanctions U.S. courts to uphold international law. It names 100 other unidentified individuals and companies.
The suit alleges that the arbitration court ruling "has been widely perceived as a means of generating huge sums of cash with which Mr. Firtash and his associates could continue to illegally fund the pervasive system of corruption that encompasses every level of government, while at the same time suppressing political dissent through intimidation, racketeering and other violations of fundamental human and political rights."
RosUkrEnergo and Mr. Firtash's spokeswoman didn't respond to emailed questions Wednesday. Representatives of Mr. Firtash and the government have previously denied wrongdoing. A spokeswoman for Mr. Yanukovych said he had no comment.
Prosecutors earlier this month announced a criminal probe into Ms. Tymoshenko for causing the state losses of around $200 million by signing the 2009 contract, which the current government has insisted set the price of gas intolerably high.
Around one dozen members of her former government are under investigations in criminal probes that Ms. Tymoshenko has called political persecution. The authorities say they are clamping down on corruption.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703367004576289031065358132.html
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