A man broke into the luxury car that Kristina Chernovetska was riding in as it stopped Monday on a highway north of Paris, then stole her purse, a police official said.
Chernovetska reported the incident to authorities and said the purse contained the valuable rings and earrings, the official said. The official was not authorized to be named according to police policy and gave no further description of the jewelry.
French police said they contacted the Ukrainian Embassy about the incident, but the embassy would not comment on it Tuesday.
A spokesman for Kiev Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, however, denied that there was a robbery.
"This is somebody's bad joke. We completely deny these reporters about a robbery. There was no robbery," Marta Hrymska said. She insisted that Chernovetska was in Kiev.
However, Chernovetska's whereabouts remained unknown Tuesday afternoon.
A receptionist at the luxury George V hotel just off the Champs Elysees confirmed that a "Christina" Chernovetska was registered, but it was not clear if that was the same person.
At the George V, the least expensive room is $1,025 a night. Luxury limousines lined up in front of the hotel for guests in furs and designer sunglasses while diners inside lunched beneath crystal chandeliers. Among goods on sale at the George V are 100,000 euro ($136,700) pearl necklaces.
Chernovetska, 30, has degrees in law and economics and heads the charity organization "Luchshy Dom" ("Best House"), a home for the elderly poor funded by the city of Kiev. She has also previously worked on her father's political campaigns.
Her father was one of the first banking magnates in Ukraine in the 1990s and sold his Pravex Bank for 493 million euros to Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo in June 2008.
The report of the jewel theft led to a political backlash Tuesday against Kristina's father.
In a statement, Volodymyr Bondarenko, parliamentary deputy for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, poked fun at both daughter and father.
"Chernovetsky needs to immediately call up his favorite grandmas and grandpas so that they could sacrifice part of their pensions to buy Kristina back her jewels," Bondarenko said.
