The high-profile case against top judges in the Kyiv Administrative District Court appears to have stalled indefinitely.
The five-day deadline for sending the case to trial or closing it expired on Nov. 12, and the main prosecutor in the case said it could take weeks or even months to send it to court. Moreover, a court may not accept the case at all given the expired deadline.
The case, which has been in the spotlight since August, involves some of Ukraine’s most controversial and politically influential judges who are accused of obstructing justice and issuing unlawful rulings.
Law enforcement has been accused of sabotaging the case due to the political connections of one of the accused, Pavlo Vovk, the former head of the Kyiv Administrative District Court who remains there as a judge.
Controversial ruling
Prosecutors applied to extend the pre-trial investigation period by three months as they wait for forensic experts to examine audio tapes implicating the judges in wrongdoing and question witnesses.
The judges were wiretapped in 2019 as part of an investigation into allegedly unlawful rulings against EuroMaidan protesters that began in 2014.
However, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky Court rejected their motion. On Nov. 7, the court ordered the Prosecutor General’s office to either close the case against the judges or send it to trial within five days.
The court argued that it could not extend the investigation, claiming that cases started before 2017 must be extended by a deputy prosecutor general rather than the courts.
Yulia Malashych, one of the prosecutors in the case, told the Kyiv Post that she believes the ruling is unlawful and absurd since the alleged crimes happened in 2019 and the case against the top judges was separate from the older case involving EuroMaidan. The court did not respond to requests for comment.
According to Malashych, if the court believed a deputy prosecutor general must extend the term, it could not have accepted the prosecutors’ motion for consideration and would have needed to send it back. Instead, the court considered and rejected it.
Malashych also said that prosecutors could not have sent the case to trial within five days because she needed to give the judges’ lawyers more time to study the materials of the case. She said it could take weeks or even months for them to do so.
The chief prosecutor in the case against the judges is Vitaly Dragunov.
Vitaly Tytych, a lawyer for EuroMaidan protesters and the former coordinator of a judicial watchdog called the Public Integrity Council, rejected Malashych’s logic. He said the law only required Malashych to give the judges’ lawyers access to case materials but did not require her to wait until they finished studying them.
He argued that prosecutors did not have a right to go beyond the five-day deadline set by the court ruling.
Tytych said that the expiration of the five-day deadline means a court is unlikely to accept the case. Malashych also said she would be surprised if courts would be willing to consider the case, given the previous sabotage by the judiciary.
Charges against top judges
On Aug. 2, the Prosecutor General’s Office pressed charges against Vovk and two other judges on the Kyiv Administrative District Court, Yevhen Ablov and Igor Pogribinchenko, and also filed charges against Ivan Shepitko, a judge on Odesa’s Suvorovsky District Court.
The judges were charged with obstructing the work of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, issuing unlawful rulings and unlawfully interfering in the work of other judges.
The judges have denied all accusations of wrongdoing.
According to previous summons, the judges have also been investigated for forgery, abuse of power, negligence, bribery and issuing unlawful rulings against protesters during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
In recordings published by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, voices alleged to belong to Vovk and other judges discuss arranging fake lawsuits to suspend the authority of High Qualification Commission members and holding fake competitions to replace them.
The recorded voices, including the one believed to be Vovk, also discussed taking bribes for court rulings and the acquisition of expensive jewelry and old coins.
