President Intervenes in Kiev Row

KIEV, Ukraine -- Newly-elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko is to intervene in the ownership row over the country's top football club Dynamo Kiev, the Interfax agency reported.

A district court in the Ukrainian capital has ordered 98.71 percent of the shares in the club to be frozen following a lawsuit by the Pacific International Sports Clubs limited.

The dispute has the highest profile of dozens of reviews of the properties once owned by the Ukrainian government and privatized during the 1990s.

Yushchenko told Kiev reporters he was monitoring the case personally, and gave his promised the dispute would be resolved in accordance with the law.

A conversation on the matter between Yushchenko and Leonid Kravchuk, a former Ukrainian President, took place earlier in the day, Yushchenko said.


Dynamo Kiev President Ihor Surkis
A defiant Dynamo Kiev president Ihor Surkis said Thursday that the court decision would not threaten the team or its owners.

Surkis called Wednesday's ruling by Kiev's Pechersk district court "pure speculation," and said that "from the legal point of view we have everything right," according to a statement issued by the club.

"The unprecedented ... decision, which was made so quickly, is in the competence of the lawyers," he added.

Surkis stressed that he was currently concerned only with Thursday's UEFA Cup match at Villarreal.

"We'll talk about everything else after the game," he told the club's Web site.

Pacific International Sport Clubs Ltd is a company, owned by Russian businessman Igor Grigorishin.

It sought the seizure of shares as part of a planned appeal to restore its priority right for purchasing the club's stock.

The Pacific International Sport Clubs Limited has claimed that during the sale of 98.71 percent of the club's stocks from 2000-04, its right of priority purchase was violated. The company also claimed that this stock sale was in violation of the law and was performed without informing it.

The court order came less than a week after a top government official warned that the 11-time Ukraine league champion could come under scrutiny as part of the new government's review of past privatizations.