The Kyiv District Administrative Court has become the epitome of injustice and corruption in Ukraine.
Its top judges, including its head Pavlo Vovk, were charged with graft and obstruction of justice twice — in August 2019 and July 2020. They deny the accusations of wrongdoing.
But the country’s whole government apparatus has protected the notorious judges. They are not under arrest, still keep their jobs and effectively hold the whole country hostage.
The judges who should be on trial themselves still keep the right to judge others.
Vovk has become so influential that he is routinely interfering in the work of other government bodies, obstructing reforms, disrupting competitions for state jobs and helping corrupt officials and oligarchs escape punishment.
He owes his staying power, it appears, to his willingness to do the bidding of whoever governs the country — and, of course, oligarchs and other powerful figures.
“It’s a great threat,” Halia Chyzhuk, a judicial expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Post. “It’s an administrative court that decides on government issues — effectively it can interfere in the work of almost all government bodies, except for parliament or the president, whose actions are appealed to the Supreme Court. But Vovk appears to have an influence on the Supreme Court as well, and sooner or later the whole government system may become hostage to a small Kyiv court.”
Supporting oligarchs
The court has been accused of acting in the interests of different oligarchs, including Ihor Kolomoisky.
The Kyiv District Administrative Court ruled in April 2019 that the nationalization of PrivatBank, formerly owned by Kolomoisky, was illegal.
PrivatBank was nationalized when it was found to have an over $5.5 billion hole in its ledger, allegedly moved out by Kolomoisky and his business partner Gennadiy Bogolyubov, via fraudulent schemes. The $5.5 billion gap was filled with Ukrainian taxpayers’ money after the bank was nationalized.
At the same time, Vovk’s court also ruled in favor of Triantal Investment Ltd, a firm co-owned by Kolomoisky, and annulled the conversion of the company’s assets by the National Bank of Ukraine.
In 2016, the Surkis brothers, whose funds in PrivatBank were nationalized on the grounds of their business ties with Kolomoisky, also filed a number of identical lawsuits at Vovk’s court allegedly waiting for the right judge to be appointed to lead the case. In 2017 Vovk’s court ruled that the Surkis brothers’ funds should be returned to them.
According to PrivatBank, the adjudication of the cases by the administrative court was questionable from the start. “Recognizing the purchase and sale of shares as invalid cannot be considered in an administrative court,” the nationalized bank told the Kyiv Post.
Even though the Surkis brothers eventually lost their case against the bank in the Supreme Court, PrivatBank says it was forced to pay around Hr 350 million ($13 million) as a result of the administrative court’s ruling. The administrative court’s decision in the Surkis family case has had a negative financial effect on PrivatBank in the amount of around Hr 1 billion.
The court’s decisions came at a great cost for the Ukrainian state. They jeopardized funding from the International Monetary Fund, which required that PrivatBank cannot be returned to Kolomoisky.
This obstacle to funding was removed only in May, when the Verkhovna Rada passed a law that bans the return of nationalized banks, including PrivatBank, to their former owners.
“Ukraine was forced to pass a special law reaffirming the obvious rules that were already in existence,” the nationalized PrivatBank said.
Helping corrupt officials
One of the most negative impacts of the court is that it has consistently helped top officials implicated in corruption keep their jobs and escape charges.
In 2018 the court reinstated former State Fiscal Service Chief Roman Nasirov, a suspect in a major corruption case, and ruled that he should be paid compensation worth Hr 183,342.
Eventually Nasirov failed to be reinstated, however, and withdrew his motion to get his job back.
Nasirov has become one of the symbols of Ukrainian corruption for civil society. In 2017 Nasirov was charged with abusing his powers by illegally allowing participants of an alleged corrupt scheme at state gas producer Ukrgazvydobuvannya to delay tax payments, causing losses to the state of Hr 2 billion ($74 million.).
Another top official helped by Vovk is Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. In 2017 Vovk’s deputy Yevhen Ablov ruled that an auction to supply backpacks to Avakov’s Interior Ministry was legal, helping to whitewash the minister. As a result, the court ruling helped several suspects in the case escape justice.
In that year, Avakov’s son Oleksandr and the minister’s ex-deputy, Serhiy Chebotar, were charged by the NABU with embezzling Hr 14 million ($550,000) by supplying overpriced backpacks to the Interior Ministry. Former Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky’s office, however, closed the case a year later despite published video evidence that shows Chebotar and Oleksandr Avakov discussing the corrupt deal. The suspects deny the accusations of wrongdoing.
According to tapes released by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, Vovk also proposed that Commissioner for Human Rights Lyudmila Denisova appoint a member of the High Qualification Commission of Judges. This was a quid pro quo: in exchange Vovk’s court would cancel rulings against her by the National Agency for Preventing Corruption.
Both sides eventually fulfilled their parts of their bargain. Denisova did not respond to requests for comment.
The Vovk tapes also document his efforts to unlawfully influence the Constitutional Court and get control over it, according to the NABU. In February 2019 the Constitutional Court canceled the law criminalizing illicit enrichment.
“Thanks to our common efforts, the decision to recognize the illicit enrichment (law) as unconstitutional has been born,” Vovk told one of his court’s judges after the ruling was issued. “That’s why you can buy anything you want.”
Vovk and Ablov were personally interested in the Constitutional Court ruling because the NABU had investigated illicit enrichment cases against them. Both had to be closed after the ruling.
Blow to reforms
Vovk’s court has done its best to obstruct reforms in Ukraine.
Specifically, in February 2019 it dealt a blow to healthcare reform by banning Ulana Suprun from fulfilling the duties of acting health minister due to her U.S. citizenship.
Anti-corruption activists argued that the court was thus trying to block Suprun’s healthcare reform and help corrupt vested interests in the healthcare industry. Amid the backlash by civil society, the court canceled its own decision on Suprun in the same month.
The court has also sabotaged judicial reform.
The NABU recordings document efforts by Vovk and other judges of the court to avoid the High Qualification Commission’s qualification assessment by faking sickness.
In May 2019, 34 judges of the Kyiv District Administrative Court did not show up for qualification assessment at the commission, claiming that they were sick. As a result — unlike many other judges — most of the court’s judges have not undergone checks of their assets and violations.
According to the recordings, Vovk also unlawfully organized the issuing of a ruling by an Odesa court to ban the qualification assessment of judges by the High Qualification Commission.
“We are unique. We are the only court that has survived all of them for five years. Unliquidated, unreformed, unassessed,” Vovk boasted and quipped, according to the NABU tapes.
Obstructing competitions
The court has also done a lot to interfere in and obstruct competitions for state jobs at various agencies. As a result, competitions for state jobs that were supposed to be fair and transparent turned out to be fake procedures with appointees chosen through corruption and political games.
In the NABU tapes, Vovk discusses the filing of fake lawsuits to suspend the authority of High Qualification Commission members and appointing others instead through fake competitions.
These members were appointed eventually. However, the whole of the High Qualification Commission, which faced accusations of corruption and sabotaging reforms, was fired in 2019 as part of a judicial reform law. A new commission has not been appointed yet.
According to the recordings, Vovk also discussed interfering in the State Investigation Bureau’s decision not to hire Ablov as a bureau official. He boasted that he is friends with the bureau’s leadership and Avakov, who Vovk said is influencing the whole appointment process. Avakov’s press office did not respond to requests for comment.
Ablov was not appointed, however.
In March 2019 Vovk also talked about obstructing the appointment of Supreme Court judges that he does not like, according to the NABU tapes.
Moreover, Vovk instructed one of the judges to arrange a fake lawsuit to cancel the results of a competition for High Council of Justice jobs, the NABU recordings show. In April 2019 the court banned Poroshenko from appointing two High Council of Justice members, although he defied the court ruling and still gave them the jobs.
Foreign policy
The court has also damaged Ukraine’s international reputation by interfering in the country’s foreign policy and trying to get involved in U.S. political games.
In 2018, the Kyiv District Administrative Court ruled in favor of then Petro Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Boryslav Rozenblat in a lawsuit he filed against then Petro Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko and NABU Chief Artem Sytnyk.
That court concluded that Leshchenko and Sytnyk had illegally interfered in Ukraine’s foreign policy when they revealed that the surname and signature of Paul Manafort, then a campaign manager for U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump, had been found in the so-called “black ledger” of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
The “black ledger” is alleged to show suspicious payments by the Party of Regions to a range of individuals and officials. It became a key document implicating Manafort in corruption in Ukraine, and helped to end his tenure as Trump’s campaign chair in August 2016.
The ruling by Vovk’s court appears to be part of then top Ukrainian officials’ efforts to curry favor with Trump.
Leshchenko also suggested that the decision was aimed at helping former President Petro Poroshenko remove Sytnyk from office.
“In response to criticism about how (firing Sytnyk) is unacceptable, the scammers in (Poroshenko’s) circle will say: we’re firing him for illegally influencing the elections in the U.S.,” Leshchenko said.
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.
Chyzhyk said that the Kyiv Court of Appeal was highly likely to block the case by transferring it to another body, and the High Council of Justice has already defended Vovk and will not suspend him.
“Vovk has connections with decision makers and he’s a very useful figure for them,” she said. “But unfortunately not a lot of people realize the scale of this disaster, and most ordinary Ukrainians have never heard about Vovk.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleksiy Sorokin contributed to this report.
