Age: 28
Education: LLM in Criminal Law at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University
Profession: Counsel at Sayenko Kharenko, expert with Reanimation Package of Reforms, former member of the Civil Oversight Council at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau
Did you know? Symonenko loves sports. As a child, she dedicated 10 years to highboard diving. These days, she enjoys running.
Criminal defense lawyer and legal expert Zlata Symonenko could have become a professional highboard diver, but chose law school instead.
Today, she defends large businesses and foreign investors working in Ukraine from allegations of economic crimes, illegal expropriation of corporate rights or assets or unlawful actions by state agencies.
She says this job merges her interest in criminal law and the business sector, the driver of the economy.
Having worked first as an assistant attorney and then as an attorney, Symonenko saw the problems of Ukraine’s criminal justice system — the low qualifications of staff, the fights between the agencies and corruption.
After the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych and his cronies from power, she joined an expert group called the Reanimation Package of Reforms and had a chance to contribute her ideas and views on how to improve the efficiency of law enforcement and prosecution agencies.
Symonenko contributed to drafting the laws on the National Police, the State Investigation Bureau and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
She says she has received offers from various political parties. But she does not see herself as a lawmaker in parliament.
The most important case for Symonenko now is the case of Nelya Pogrebitska, a victim of torture and rape by police officers at Kaharlyk, a town outside of Kyiv. When the incident became public in May, it sparked an outcry about the country’s failed police reform.
But Symonenko says, for her, it was more about breaking the silence about violence against women.
“There is a tendency when women are told not to complain, not to speak up about violence,” she says, adding that the male-dominated justice system does not give female victims an opportunity to fully open up, as they might feel sensitive or ashamed to talk to men about the personal details of the violence.
Symonenko is on Pogrebitska’s all-female defender team along with lawyers Olena Sotnyk, Tetyana Kozachenko and Anna Kalynchuk.
“Knowing the realities of law enforcement and criminal prosecution and seeing this young woman left one-on-one against the system, we realized that only women can understand her,” Symonenko reflects on the decision to take Pogrebitska’s case pro bono. “She was in a critical situation surrounded only by men, who are investigators and lawyers.”
The Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Nov. 16 that the pre-trial investigation would charge five Kaharlyk police officers with torture, forced disappearance and rape.
Symonenko is prepared for a hard fight in court: It is a high-profile case of police brutality where a police chief could be convicted for knowing of and ignoring a horrible crime.
