Ukraine bans ex-PM from EU trip: prosecutors

(KIEV) - Ukrainian prosecutors on Monday said they would not allow former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko to leave the country next month for a political meeting in Brussels amid an ongoing legal probe.

"The investigating judge rejected the request," prosecutors said in a statement. "There is information that she could use the trip to quit the country and escape the inquiry."

Tymoshenko is being investigated for abuse of office while in power on charges she maintains are an act of political revenge by new President Viktor Yanukovych to whom she lost in last year's presidential polls.

Reacting to the ban, the former premier said in a statement: "I don't intend to flee the country but I intend to fight for democracy in Ukraine."

The Ukrainian leadership "fears that European leaders will receive first-hand accounts of the political persecutions in my country," she said.

Last week prosecutors rejected her request to travel to Brussels on the basis that the invitations sent by the European People's Party and European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek had not been translated into Ukrainian.

Meanwhile authorities also launched legal proceedings against two former leaders of the State Reserves Committee under Tymoshenko alleged to have been involved in the theft of more than seven billion hryvnias (650 million euros) in public funds from 2008-2010.

Vitaly Nikitin, who directed the committee in 2008-2010, was arrested on Friday and a search warrant has been been issued for his predecessor, Mykhailo Pozhyvanov, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said.

The current government has opened criminal probes into numerous other former senior officials in Tymoshenko's regime for abuse of power. Two former ministers were arrested and another is living in exile in the Czech Republic.

The United States and Europe have voiced concern over "selective" justice in the former Soviet republic.