programmatic api vs cli

[lenosky]

Hi,
I set up typescript test project using ts-node,
running .ts tests via cli, using --require ts-mocha, succeeds, but via equal programmatic interface complains with
SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module.
Here is a part of it:

require('ts-mocha');

function run() {
let specDir = "./specs/";
const mocha = new MochaWrapper();
mocha.timeout(3 * 10000);
fs.readdirSync(specDir)
.filter(spec => spec.substr(-3) === '.ts')
.forEach(spec => mocha.addFile(path.join(specDir, spec)));
mocha.run();
}

Target is es6 with commonjs modules.

Please help, how to correctly set it up to run programmatically