Tymoshenko sues over gas deal

NEW YORK, April 27 (UPI) -- A Russian energy trader is reaping huge financial gains from a legal decision that took natural gas from the people of Ukraine, an opposition leader said.

Opposition leader and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko filed a racketeering lawsuit in a U.S. district court in New York against gas trader RosUkrEnergy and Ukrainian tycoon Dmitry Firtash, one of its owners. The suit accuses both of manipulating a 2010 decision reached in favor of the Russian trader in a Swedish arbitration court, Bloomberg News reports.

Tymoshenko signed a deal in 2009 that cut RosUkrEnergy out of the market. The Russian company accused Tymoshenko of confiscating its gas and took the matter to the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal.

The court in 2010 ruled Ukrainian utility company Naftogaz owed RosUkrEnergy billions of cubic feet of natural gas and penalties. Tymoshenko claims the case let the Russian trader generate "huge sums of cash" by reselling the gas, her complaint states.

Tymoshenko is under investigation in Kiev for allegedly abusing power in a natural gas deal signed with Russia in 2009 when she was prime minister of Ukraine.