KIEV, May 19 – President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration has been secretly examining a personal dossier on the journalist who recently published a controversial video despite its attempts to stop the release, two independent sources reported Wednesday.

The file, labelled as “confidential” and containing personal information on Mustafa Nayem, has been sitting on the desk of Serhiy Liovochkin, Yanukovych’s chief of staff, TeleKrytyka, an independent news agency, reported, citing a source at the administration.

Nayem, an investigative journalist who writes for Ukrayinska Pravda online newspaper and hosts a political talk show on TVi, said his own sources had confirmed the report.

“I don’t know why they need the information on me, but my sources confirm this fact is true,” Nayem said.

Liovochkin, contacted by Nayem later in the day by phone, denied the reports.

“I decisively and categorically deny the existence of such a file,” Liovochkin told Nayem.

The reports, however, raise serious concerns and come amid increasingly worsening freedom of speech environment in Ukraine over the past three months since the inauguration of Yanukovych.

There were reports of police violently attacking reporters in Lviv, and a local official attacking reporters in Kiev. The administration has restricted access to Yanukovych’s press conferences for journalists on several occasions.

Law enforcement organs have been specifically targeting opposition figures in a number of investigators re-opened across the country over the past few weeks.

Nayem has a history of uneasy relations with Yanukovych.

In a popular Shuster Live television talk show earlier this year Nayem has confronted Yanukovych - then a presidential candidate - about a land plot he had privatized in a controversial transaction back when he had been the prime minister in 2006.

The plot, known as Mezhyhiriya in the Kiev region, is about the same size as the Principality of Liechtenstein, the smallest country in the world.

“From the question you have asked, I can see that you are not my friend,” Yanukovych said in response to Nayem’s question to explain details of the privatization.

Yanukovych refused to answer the question, only saying it was the job for prosecutors to check whether the privatization was legal.

A massive construction is currently underway in Mezhyhiriya erecting a series of palaces, entertainment complexes and recreation facilities.

The video that Nayem recovered and posted on YouTube on Monday shows a burst of wind throwing a big wreath at Yanukovych during an official ceremony with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The administration moved quickly to ban the video, which some say is funny, and most television crews had complied.

But Nayem recovered the video and posted it on YouTube. It has become an instant internet sensation in Ukraine and in Russia with almost one million views reported in the first 24 hours after the release.

“Now, the scoop is not the fall of the wreath, but the dumbness and the savageness of the administration,” Nayem wrote on his blog after releasing the video. (tl/ez)