KIEV, May 26 - Ukraine’s top regional reformer, who is critical of the government, said Thursday his administration was raided by a law enforcement team in an apparent political attack for his anti-corruption activity.

Odessa region governor Mikheil Saakashvili said the team was targeting his senior adviser, Teymuraz Nishnianidze, investigating alleged wrongdoings dating back to 2011-2013.

"Are you are crazy?!” Saakashvili said while facing off the investigators. “You locked our staff members in the room and made them sit there for 4 hours supervised by people armed with guns, while performing this sinister political order.”

Saakashvili said the raid of his administration comes in response to his crusade against corruption in the central government, and seeks to thwart his attempts to create a popular political party to promote reforms.

The raid comes days after Saakashvili, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, criticized President Petro Poroshenko for his extremely slow pace of reforms and for appointing “a bunch of mediocre people” as the new government last month.

“Now he’s brought in a government which has not got any vision of reforms at all,” Saakashvili told The Guardian.

The developments come days after Poroshenko managed to approve the leader of his group in Parliament, Yuriy Lutsenko, as the new Prosecutor General.

Lutsenko, in a statement released hours after the raid, said the investigation was not a political attack. “The investigators had no questions to Odessa governor Saakashvili,” Lutsenko said. “The investigation in Odessa had no political component.”

The massive raid of the Saakashvili administration comes amid little to no progress in investigations of major corruption allegations in the central government, including at customs offices. Saakashvili accused Roman Nasirov, the head of the State Fiscal Service and a top Poroshenko ally, for derailing his every effort to make Odessa customs more transparent and business-friendly.

Lutsenko said the investigation was focusing on Teymuraz Nishnianidze and dates back to the time when he was the Consul General of Georgia in Ukraine in 2011-2013. During this period, the Consulate allegedly received 20 million hryvnias in value added tax refund from Ukraine.

Nishnianidze quickly dismissed the allegations of any wrongdoing.

“They said that they suspect my abuse of power, but I am a citizen of Georgia and had never had any official position in Ukraine,” Nishnianidze said.

Nishnianidze is currently leading the charitable foundation, For the Benefit of Odessa, which is buying army equipment and sends it to Ukrainian troops fighting pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk.

“Since they have taken documents, I cannot arrange the transfer of a 195,000-hryvnia worth of binoculars we have literally yesterday acquired for the soldiers,” he said. (tl/ez)