KIEV, Dec. 15 – The Prosecutor General’s Office on Wednesday opened a criminal investigation against opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, effectively restricting her ability to travel ahead of her planned visit to Brussels.

Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and the leader of Batkivshchyna party, was supposed to travel to Brussels later this month for a meeting of the European People’s Party.

She will now have to stay in Kiev, and will have to attend questioning at the Prosecutor General’s Office on Monday.

“The terror against the opposition continues,” Tymoshenko said leaving the Prosecutor General’s Office on Wednesday after questioning. “I just learnt they had opened the criminal case against me.”

Tymoshenko attended the EPP’s meeting in Brussels in September to criticize on international arena policies of President Viktor Yanukovych, including his alleged attempts to restrict the freedom of speech.

Days after that trip an anonymous caller has warned Tymoshenko that she will “cough up blood” if she continues to criticize Yanukovych internationally.

The caller also told Tymoshenko that her closest ally, Oleksand Turchynov, “will be jailed” to give her a lesson after the EPP had issued a resolution critical of Yanukovych.

Ukraine’s SBU security service launched an investigation into the anonymous phone call, but had made little progress. SBU chief Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy later suggested the call was a fake.

Meanwhile, Heorhiy Filipchuk, a former environment protection minister and a Tymoshenko ally, was arrested on Tuesday after questioning at the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Filipchuk becomes the latest in a number of ministers from the Tymoshenko government that are either arrested or wanted by the investigators in connection of numerous alleged violations.

Yuriy Lutsenko, a former interior minister, is under investigation for alleged abuse of power, such as for allegedly illegally hiring and promoting his personal driver.

“They want to turn Ukraine into a police state where the word ‘democracy’ is nothing but an empty sound reserved for foreign delegations,” Lutsenko said Wednesday.

“It’s logical to assume that the next step for the authorities will be to prosecute all those who has participated the Orange Revolution” in November 2004, Lutsenko sad.

By opening the probe against Tymoshenko, the prosecutors alleged there was misuse of funds her government raised from selling carbon dioxide emission allowances in 2009.

Ukraine deputed on this market last year by signing five separate agreements with Japan and Spain on sale of 32 million AAUs worth about 320 million Euros, according to the government.

The raised cash was supposed to be spent to finance energy conservation projects and reducing greenhouse gases emission in Ukraine.

But the prosecutors said the government of Tymoshenko had apparently ordered the National Bank of Ukraine to convert the major part of this money to hrynias, the local currency, to finance the budget deficit, according to preliminary results of the investigation.

The transaction was in violation of the budget legislation, the investigators said.

The Tymoshenko government was facing huge budget gap in 2009 after the country’s economy had contracted 15% on the year after collapse of its steel exports, the major source of hard currency. The exports collapsed as demand for steel had dropped due to slowing construction activity around the world due to credit crunch.

Ukraine borrowed heavily – mostly from the International Monetary Fund – to finance its budget deficit last year.

Tymoshenko defended her actins by stressing that Ukraine was facing a major economic crisis.

“They opened the criminal investigation because the environment money had been spent on pensions,” Tymoshenko said. “I committed a terrible crime that I had paid out the pensions to people when the country was in a real crisis.” (tl/ez)