KIEV, Jan. 18 - Prosecutors said they will seek life imprisonment for jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko amid new claims of her alleged involvement in the murder of a lawmaker and businessman in the 1990s.

The claims, officially made on Friday, may further deteriorate relations between Ukraine and the West. The relations cooled significantly after Tymoshenko had been jailed to seven years in prison in October 2011 on abuse-of-office charges.

Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka told reporters on Friday that investigators had completed their investigation into the killing of businessman and lawmaker Yevhen Shcherban in 1996 and concluded that Tymoshenko and an ally had ordered the murder, paying the killers $2.8 million, Pshonka's office said.

Pshonka said Tymoshenko was “served notice of suspicion” of organizing the murder together with former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko.

Prosecutors will apparently focus on a financial transaction made by one of Tymoshenko’s companies to a bank account controlled by Lazarenko, who had apparently made several transactions to a person known to be a go-between with a gang that had killed Shcherban.

Shcherban was shot with his wife and two others at a Donetsk airport in 1996.

Pshonka didn't say if or when she would be formally charged. A spokesman for the general prosecutor couldn't be reached for comment.

Tymoshenko denied involvement in the murder.

She is already on trial for alleged financial crimes when she headed a gas-trading firm in the 1990s. The trial was adjourned on Friday after she didn't appear in court due to her continued ill health, her lawyer said. Prosecutors accused her of trying to "avoid responsibility."

“Materials gathered in the pre-trial investigation . . . provide evidence that Tymoshenko really did order this killing” together with Lazarenko, Pshonka said.

Both Tymoshenko and Lazarenko, who recently completed a US prison term on money laundering charges, have categorically denied involvement in the murder and called the allegations politically motivated.

Meanwhile, the move could further complicate relations with the European Union and US as Ukraine enters a year analysts believe could be decisive in determining whether one of Europe’s biggest nations shifts closer to the EU or tilts back towards Russia.

“This will be seen [by the west] as a major escalation of the case against Tymoshenko, and I doubt that it will see no response,” said Tim Ash, head of emerging market research at Standard Bank, said quoted by the Financial Times. “Western diplomats have argued that such action . . . would risk sanctions being levied by Western governments against individual members of the Yanukovych administration.” (tl/ez)