KIEV, April 11 – Ukrainian prosecutors opened a new criminal investigation against opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, now alleging that she had exceeded her authority while negotiating a 10-year natural gas agreement with Russia in January 2009.

This is the third probe targeting the former prime minister, the first two focusing on the alleged mismanagement of environmental funds and purchases of allegedly overpriced ambulances for rural doctors.

“The criminal case was a opened against the former prime minister Tymoshenko suspecting exceeding of her authority while negotiating the gas agreements in 2009,” Renat Kuzmin, the first deputy prosecutor general, said at a press conference.

Kuzmin said the prosecutors believe the gas agreements may have caused more than 1.5 billion hryvnias in damages for Ukraine by introducing a price of gas that had de-facto exceeded what many European countries pay for Russian gas.

The significance of the new investigation is that the authorities may have view the first two criminal investigations as insufficient charges for possible conviction.

“The first two cases have collapsed,” Oleksiy Pashynskiy, a Tymoshenko loyalist, said Monday. “Now they are trying to open the new investigation.”

It is also important that it may affect Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had directly negotiated the gas agreements with Tymoshenko. Some people said Tymoshenko and Putin had had good working relationship that may have benefited Russian business interests in Ukraine, as had culminated in the January 2009 gas agreements.

The announcement comes a day before Putin is due to arrive in Kiev for important trade talks with Ukraine, and may seek to put pressure on Kiev to abandon on-gong free trade talks with the European Union.

Meanwhile, Tymshenko on Monday denied any new allegations against her, and said the prosecutors were themselves confused, underscoring the political motivation in the probe.

“I came to the Prosecutor General’s Office and they know nothing about the new probe,” Tymoshenko said in her post on Twitter. “Right now the probes like this are being drafted in the office of Yanukovych.”

“They keep fabricating the probes,” Tymoshenko said on het Twitter account on Monday, adding that the authorities probably don’t have enough time to finish the investigations.

After one hour of waiting for the new papers, Tymoshenko posted another blog, saying the prosecutors have finally refused to present an official resolution authorizing the latest investigation against her.

“The investigator by the name Nechvoglod told me that I should not wait,” Tymoshenko said. “They don’t have time as they cannot falsify cases ahead of every press conference.” (tl/ez)