The High Council of Justice, the judiciary’s highest governing body, on Sept. 1 unanimously refused to suspend several top judges charged with corruption and obstruction of justice, including Pavlo Vovk.
On the same day, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine published recordings implicating members of the High Council of Justice in the alleged criminal schemes of Vovk, head of the Kyiv Administrative District Court, and six other judges of his court. The council did not respond to requests for comment, while the judges denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
The case involves some of Ukraine’s most controversial and politically influential judges who are accused of obstructing justice, organized crime, and bribery. The country’s whole law enforcement system has faced accusations of sabotaging the case due to Vovk’s political connections.
“The investigators have found that (Vovk) has unprecedented influence on specific members of the High Council of Justice,” the NABU said.
The High Council of Justice’s decision not to suspend Vovk triggered a backlash from civil society.
“After the new NABU recordings on Vovk effectively managing the High Council of Justice, I did not expect any other result,” said Roman Maselko, a member of civic watchdog Public Integrity Council. “This also proves that there is not a single chance for justice with this High Council of Justice.”
In July the High Council of Justice asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to open a criminal investigation into alleged unlawful interference by the NABU into the work of several council members. The council also lambasted the NABU for the use of the words “crimes” and “corruption” in the NABU’s statements about the Vovk case, claiming that they violated the presumption of innocence.
NABU recordings
Specifically, Vovk mentioned the involvement of Andrii Ovsiienko, head of the High Council of Justice, and council members Oleh Prudyvus, Pavlo Grechkivsky, Viktor Hryshchuk and Mykola Khudyk in his alleged bargains with the council, according to the NABU recordings.
Vovk, judges of his court and a judge of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal also discussed bargains between Vovk’s court and the High Council of Justice on not punishing judges loyal to Vovk for disciplinary infractions and punishing judges disloyal to Vovk.
“(The High Council of Justice) agreed not to touch your guys (of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal) during the appeal stage,” Vovk said… “(High Council of Justice member) Grechkivsky helped us. He talked to everyone and reached a bargain.”
Vovk talked to Hryshchuk, a member of the High Council of Justice, about appointing a member loyal to Vovk to the council.
Antonina Slavytska, a former lawmaker and aide to ex-lawmaker Serhiy Kivalov, also talked to Hryshchuk about meeting Vovk and Oleg Omelchuk, a candidate loyal to Vovk, to discuss Omelchuk’s potential appointment to the High Council of Justice.
According to the recordings, Vovk also tried to influence the election of the High Council of Justice’s chairman.
“Pasha, he’ll have to be fired, we don’t fucking need him there,” Vovk told Grechkivsky about Volodymyr Govorukha’s appointment as head of the council in April 2019.
He subsequently instructed another judge to prepare a fake lawsuit to cancel Govorukha’s appointment.
Vovk said in June that, if the High Council of Justice toed the Presidential Administration’s line, it would be fine. But he said that otherwise the council would be completely replaced. The President’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Specifically, the Presidential Administration wanted Govorukha to be fired as chairman of the council and two other members to be replaced, Vovk said.
In June Zelensky canceled the appointment of two council members by his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, citing procedural violations, and later replaced them with two other ones. In September Govorukha was replaced with Ovsiienko as chairman of the council.
Vovk said in the recordings that he sought to “seize power in the High Council of Justice.”
He also talked to a member of the High Council of Justice about appointing his loyalists, including Mykola Syrosh, to the High Qualification Commission of Judges, another judicial body.
He also threatened to “annihilate” the High Qualification Commission if it dared assess the assets and integrity of his court’s members, according to the NABU recordings.
Vovk case blocked again
In August 2019, the Prosecutor General’s Office pressed its first charges against Vovk and other judges of his court. The judges were then charged with obstructing the work of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, issuing unlawful rulings and unlawfully interfering in the work of other judges.
Later prosecutors applied to extend the pre-trial investigation period by three months. However, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky Court rejected their motion and ordered the Prosecutor General’s Office to either close the case against the judges or send it to trial within five days. The prosecutors did not send it to trial, and the case stalled indefinitely after that.
In July 2020, the NABU resurrected the case and charged Vovk and other judges of his court with organized crime, usurpation of power, bribery and unlawful interference with government officials. They ignored the NABU’s summonses, and the bureau put Vovk and the other judges on a wanted list on Aug. 11.
Two sources at the NABU and the Prosecutor General’s Office told the Kyiv Post that Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova had been blocking the case and refusing to apply for the judges’ suspension. However, under public pressure Venediktova on Aug. 21 applied to the High Council of Justice for suspending the judges.
Serhiy Vovk, a notorious judge at Kyiv’s Pechersk Court, on Aug. 4 ordered the case to be transferred from the NABU to another body. Anti-corruption activists interpret this as an effort to kill the case since the State Investigation Bureau, Security Service of Ukraine and the police, which may get the case, are politically dependent and are likely to bury the case.
The NABU appealed the Pechersk Court’s decision but the Supreme Court refused to allow the anti-corruption court’s appeal chamber to consider the case. As a result, the Kyiv Court of Appeal will consider whether to let the NABU investigate it, and anti-corruption activists say the court will likely bury the case by taking it away from the bureau.
