An investigation is now under way on claims that allegedly, Ukraine's former Prime Minster Yulia Tymoshenko and her relatives have millions of pounds in bank accounts all over the world.

The investigation was initiated last March by the now ousted Ukraine's President Victor Yanukovich and the then Ukrainian Ministry of Revenues and Duties and is held by London-based law company Lawrence Graham.

The investigation reviewed 278 bank accounts in 26 countries and, allegedly, found out that Ms Tymoshenko or her relatives were either beneficiaries or signatories to at least some of them.

According to a publication in the Independent, a certain leaked report contains evidence that in the UK alone, 85 bank accounts containing millions of pounds were linked to Yulia Tymoshenko or her relatives.

However, Ms Tymoshenko's supporters are saying that she has not been involved in any commercial activity since she became a politician in 1997.

"She has no property, no assets, no accounts in USA, UK and Switzerland," Tymoshenko's lawyer Sergey Vlasenko says, adding that the team of her lawyers is ready to cooperate with anyone who would want to investigate anything about her alleged bank accounts.

The Yanukovich regime hired Lawrence Graham to trace more than $ 200 mln that were allegedly pocketed by Tymoshenko and another former Ukranian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko in the late 1990s. At that time, Tymoshenko headed United Energy System.

In 2004, Pavlo Lazarenko was charged of money laundering, theft and hiding the funds in foreign accounts and sentenced to 8 years in a prison in Califirnia. Tymoshenko was suspected of having to do with Lazarenko's machinations but was not found guilty because of lack of sufficient evidence.

However, these accusations against Ms Tymoshenko are separate from the ones under which she was jailed during Yanukovich's presidency. The officially declared reason for her imprisonment was a gas deal that she concluded with Russia's President Putin back in 2009, when she was Ukraine's Prime Minister.

Ms Tymoshenko's accusers are claiming that she concluded that deal bypassing the then Ukrainian President Victor Yuschenko and on conditions unprofitable to Ukraine.

However, her supporters are saying that by that deal, Tymoshenko saved Ukraine from a gas crisis because the deal's conclusion made Putin reject his earlier plans to stop gas supplies to Ukraine. The real reason why Yanukovich imprisoned Tymoshenko was to get rid of a political opponent, her supporters claim.

It is yet hard to say whether Yulia Tymoshenko would manage to find a common language with Ukraine's new authorities. She is planning to run for presidency at the coming elections. However, the corruption charges against her are instilling serious doubts in her chances to win - the more so because opponents of the ousted President Yanukovich are accusing him of not fighting against corruption radically enough.