In Kyiv, a controversial judge named Vovk can always count on another controversial judge named Vovk to get him out of trouble.
This played out again on June 17, when Serhiy Vovk, a judge at Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court, ordered prosecutors to close an obstruction of justice case against his namesake, Pavlo Vovk, the head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court.
The two judges are not related.
Pavlo Vovk, his deputy Yevhenii Ablov, and judges of his court were hit with obstruction of justice charges in 2019 and corruption charges in a different case in 2020. But prosecutors and other judges, including Serhiy Vovk, have consistently blocked the cases from advancing.
The Pechersk District Court’s decision, reported by the Slidstvo.info investigative journalism project on June 23, is likely a death knell for the obstruction of justice case.
Pavlo Vovk is arguably Ukraine’s most infamous judge. Civil society sees him as an avatar of judicial corruption and impunity and he’s been audiotaped discussing corrupt deals and even bragging about the “political prostitution” of his court. He has denied all allegations against him.
Serhiy Vovk has a checkered past as well. In 2015, he was charged with making an unlawful ruling in a civil case and temporarily suspended. In 2012, he sentenced politician Yury Lutsenko to four years in jail, which European authorities recognized as politically motivated. Lutsenko was an opponent of then-President Viktor Yanukovych.
The Pechersk Court and the Kyiv District Administrative Court did not respond to requests for comment.
Gold Porsche
Serhiy Vovk’s decision upheld a lawsuit filed by Ablov against the Prosecutor General’s Office in an effort to close the obstruction of justice case. The motives for the ruling are not yet clear, and the full text of the decision is expected to be published later.
Earlier, Slidstvo.info published a photo of Ablov driving a high-end Porsche Cayenne car to the Pechersk Court on the eve of the hearing.
“It was not an accident that Yevheniy Ablov drove a gold-colored Porsche to this court on the eve of the hearing,” Slidstvo.info journalist Yevhenia Motorevska wrote on Facebook, implying that the Pechersk Court’s decision could have been a result of Ablov’s visit.
Serhiy Vovk had already tried to help Pavlo Vovk escape corruption charges in 2020, ordering the case to be taken away from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and telling prosecutors to drop the charges. These rulings were not implemented at the time.
Cases shut down
In August 2019, the Prosecutor General’s Office charged Pavlo Vovk and other judges of his court with obstruction of justice.
However, in November 2019, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskiy District Court rejected a motion to extend this investigation and ordered prosecutors to either close the case or send it to trial within five days. The prosecutors did not send it to trial and the case stalled indefinitely.
In July 2020, the NABU launched a separate case, charging the judge with organized crime, usurpation of power, bribery and unlawful interference with government officials.
For months, Pavlo Vovk ignored summonses from the NABU. The bureau got multiple court warrants to bring him to his bail hearings by force but he always managed to hide from it
The NABU had asked Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to authorize an arrest warrant for Vovk for months but she refused.
Responding to accusations of sabotage, Venediktova said in March that she cannot take Vovk to court by force. She added that she doubted the effectiveness of the investigation and said that she did not see any “trial prospects” in the case.
Much like in the previous case, Andriy Bitsyuk, a judge at the High Anti-Corruption Court, refused to extend the corruption investigation against Vovk in March — prosecutors had to send it to trial within five days or close the investigation. The deadline elapsed, likely killing the case, which has not been sent to trial so far.
In April the NABU arrested Vovk’s brother, Yury Zontov, an employee of the Foreign Intelligence Service. He was charged with receiving a $100,000 bribe as an intermediary for Vovk.
Blocked liquidation
In response to the scandal, President Volodymyr Zelensky in April submitted an urgent bill to liquidate Vovk’s notorious Kyiv District Administrative Court.
However, the bill has been effectively blocked by parliament’s legal policy committee, headed by Andriy Kostin, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.
Kostin and the president’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
The nonprofit Anti-Corruption Action Center believes that despite saying he wants to shut down Vovk’s court, Zelensky may want to keep it around to make favorable decisions.
For example, this court can cancel the selection of the next chief anti-corruption prosecutor, if the winning candidate doesn’t suit the president.
Keeping this ace in the hole may be a response to international experts’ veto of the government’s preferred candidate on June 4, according to the watchdog.
One of the candidates has already filed a lawsuit with Vovk’s court, disputing the results of the selection. The court has accepted it for consideration.
Separately, on June 18, Vovk’s court also blocked an order by an anti-graft agency to fire Yuriy Vitrenko, the CEO of state hydrocarbon monopoly Naftogaz. Zelensky’s government installed Vitrenko in a way that raised many concerns from Ukraine’s international partners.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center believes that the court ruling on Vitrenko is Vovk’s quid pro quo deal with the authorities in exchange for not liquidating the court.
