A group of Ukrainian citizens living in Finland suspect electoral fraud in voting in their country’s Presidential election that took place in Helsinki.
Four of the 12 members on the election committee at the Ukrainian Embassy in Helsinki refused to sign the document testifying to the election result.
In addition to Embassy staff, the committee included members of the association of Ukrainian citizens in Finland.
More than 200 Ukrainians voted at the embassy. One voter, who showed up at the Embassy shortly before the polls closed, noticed that he had already been listed as having cast his vote.
"It was a technical error, nothing else", said the Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksandr Maidannyk on Tuesday.
He said that one of the election officials had made a mistake by not checking the identity of one man who had previously voted.
The Ambassador said that the man who came later was also allowed to vote. He also said that the event was an isolated incident.
However, another voter, mobile telephone designer Denis Pertsev, said that there were several suspicious cases. Included among those who voted were a Ukrainian who was known to have moved to the United States more than a year earlier.
The signatures of the suspicious voters also appeared to have very similar handwriting.
The result of the vote in Helsinki - a clear majority for opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko - has already been sent to Kiev, because the signatures of a majority of the members of the election committee were considered sufficient.
On Tuesday Ambassador Maidannyk was summoned to the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs to hear the common concern expressed by the European Union over the apparent irregularities of the Presidential Elections. The same statement was to have been read out to the heads of Ukrainian diplomatic missions in all EU capitals.
