High-ranking officials from the presidential secretariat and family members of Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko falsified evidence in his poisoning case, according to Larysa Cherednichenko, head of the department for supervision over investigations into criminal cases of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office.

Cherednichenko came to this conclusion while working in the parliamentary permanent investigations commission investigating the circumstances surrounding Yuschenko's poisoning, and reported it to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko, the Segodnya newspaper reported on Saturday.

In her report to the prosecutor general, Cherednichenko accused some officials close to Yushchenko, led by his wife Kateryna, of interfering with the investigation and try to hide the "artificiality" of the fact of the poisoning, which is believed to have taken place when Yuschenko ran for president.

"As [Davyd] Zhvaniya [member of the Our Ukraine - People's Self-Defense faction of the Ukrainian parliament, who has more than once denied Yuschenko's poisoning] said, the victim had blood samples taken from him in September-October 2004 with help from an Austrian doctor. However, the samples were not studied in Ukraine or another European country. They were secretly taken to the U.S., where they were enriched with dioxin and were later taken to the UK with help from the U.S. special services. Those blood samples were sent by the administration of the Austrian clinic Rudolfinerhous to expert establishments, which found dioxin," Segodnya quoted Cherednichenko as saying.

Yuschenko's wife said in an interview with the Ukraina Moloda newspaper, commenting on this statement, that she has been accused of involvement in her husband's poisoning.

"I was accused of falsifying the test results and making that plan to help him win the elections," she said.

According to information possessed by Segodnya, Cherednichenko was warned that she would be dismissed from her office immediately after she wrote her report on August 26. She was offered two positions, which she refused and contested her dismissal in court.