Tymoshenko says husband's arrest is the result of political pressure on her

r the government Yulia Tymoshenko says that the accusations against her husband Oleksandr Tymoshenko are groundless, and are the result of political pressure being placed on her, UNIAN reported.

“There is no evidence to prove the accusations against my husband. There are groundless allegations, and every day political pressure is being exerted on me based on those allegations,” Tymoshenko said on Monday, November 20 after a court hearing where an appeal by Oleksandr Tymoshenko’s lawyer against the warrant to arrest Oleksandr Tymoshenko was considered.

Yulia Tymoshenko said that the case against Valery Falkovych and Oleksandr Tymoshenko shows that the prosecutor’s office “can engage in anything to ruin people’s lives without any grounds.”

“This is the elimination of the individual in Ukraine, the elimination of manifestations of patriotism, this is lawlessness,” Tymoshenko believes, as reported by UNIAN.

“From the first day I had no doubt that the case was fabricated, this is a political fight against me, and my husband became the hostage of this situation” she said.

Tymoshenko said that she believes that “some remnants of justice must be left in the country, and that the court will cancel all charges by the prosecutor’s office, which are completely groundless.”

Nevertheless, Tymoshenko said that she is supported by her family, as her husband has said that she should not give up her position in the government.

Tymoshenko said that she will fight for her husband, but that “this does not mean that I will collude with corrupt clans and corrupt agencies, who are proposing that I should resign”, according to the report.

To the contrary, Tymoshenko said that she will begin her fight with the shadow economy in the coal sector.

The fight, according to Deputy PM, begins “starting from the next day” – (Tuesday).

Tymoshenko called the coal sector the most corrupt sector, and promised to “systematically take every mine apart to see what is going on there and to introduce mechanisms which were applied on the energy market so that the mines’ funds can be under complete control, so that they are used in accordance with the law, and so that they find their way to miners and not to the pockets of those operating in the coal sector’s shadow sphere,” according to UNIAN.

Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine board member Oleksandr Tymoshenko and the corporation’s first deputy director general, Valery Falkovych were arrested on order from the General Prosecutor’s Office on August 18 of this year and arraigned on charges of embezzling $800,000 in public funds through the export of rolled metal to Asian countries during the 1990s. A criminal case against the two was filed based on those charges, news wires reported earlier

In addition, Falkovych was charged with forging documents and smuggling Russian gas worth Hr 3 billion in 1996 and 1997 under the aegis of UESU, which Obikhod said had close ties with Russian Defense Ministry officials and former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who is awaiting trial on charges of money laundering in the United States.

Yulia Tymoshenko, Deputy Prime Minister and Oleksandr Tymoshenko’s wife, had said that his arrest had been engineered by political rivals who oppose her efforts to fight energy sector corruption, according to media reports.

Yulia Tymoshenko is also the head of the country’s energy sector in the Yushchenko government.