Investigators Tuesday searched the apartment of former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko who is now an opponent of the powerful prime minister and his Cabinet, The Associated Press news agency reports, quoting Lutsenko’s spokeswoman.

Prosecutors launched an investigation earlier this month into allegations of abuse of power by Lutsenko. But his spokeswoman, Larisa Sargan, said the four prosecutorial investigators who showed up at his apartment at 6 a.m. gave no explanation for the search.

A spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, Yuriy Boychenko, said Lutsenko is accused of providing firearms worth 143,000 thousand hryvna ($28, 000) to people who had no gun licenses. He said he had no information about the search.

Lutsenko, an ally of President Viktor Yushchenko and one of the key organizers of the 2004 Orange Revolution, was also subpoenaed for questioning by prosecutors later Tuesday.

He now leads a political movement that is organizing a series of anti- government rallies around the ex-Soviet republic this spring. Supporters of the rallies hope they will galvanize Ukrainians much as the Orange Revolution protests against election fraud did more than two years ago.

After the Orange Revolution helped Yushchenko defeat Viktor Yanukovych in a court-ordered revote, Lutsenko became the interior minister where he spearheaded corruption investigations into some of Yanukovych’s closest allies.

Lawmakers allied with Yushchenko accused Yanukovych’s Cabinet and parliamentary majority of political repression and demanded an explanation from the Prosecutor General’s Office. Parliament also asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to explain the situation.

“The search shows that the enforcement bodies have started using the old method of political persecution,” said Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, head of Yushchenko’s parliamentary faction Our Ukraine.

Yanukovych countered that he doesn’t intervene in the activity of prosecutors. As criticism over the search erupted, Yanukovych said he discussed the issue with the president and Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko over the phone.

The chief prosecutor “told me that prosecutors are acting according to law and the search happened due to court decisions,” said Yanukovych.

Lutsenko has come under pressure since the Russian-leaning Yanukovych took over the premiership last year after his party won the most votes in parliamentary elections. He was fired by the parliament in December, and has been the subject of a harsh propaganda campaign in some Ukrainian media.

Last November, a Kiev court found Lutsenko guilty of corruption — a ruling his lawyer said was politically motivated — and sentenced him to pay a fine of just over $65.

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