The legal deadline for sending to trial a corruption case against controversial Judge Pavlo Vovk expired on March 22, which is likely to result in the case’s closure.
In July 2020 Vovk, head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court, and its other judges were charged with organized crime, abuse of power, bribery and unlawful interference with government officials. Vovk denies the accusations.
Vovk is seen by civil society as the epitome of judicial corruption and impunity in Ukraine. The country’s law enforcement system, including judges and prosecutors, has consistently blocked the Vovk case.
In audio recordings published by National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Vovk discusses numerous corrupt deals, gives illegal orders and quips that no one should doubt the court’s “political prostitution.” One of the court’s judges was recorded as saying that he supports “any lawlessness in the judiciary.”
Andriy Bitsyuk, a judge at the High Anti-Corruption Court, on March 17 refused to extend the corruption investigation against Vovk. According to the Criminal Procedure Code, prosecutors had to either close the investigation or send it to trial within five days.
Prosecutors Serhiy Kozachyna and Oleh Makar, who are leading the case, told the Kyiv Post they would not send it to trial before the five-day deadline, which expired on March 22.
Kozachyna and Makar said they believed the five-day deadline should not be “interpreted literally” and does not apply to this case. They argued that a court should accept the case even after the deadline has expired.
However, they acknowledged that a court may disagree and decide that it’s too late to accept the case.
Kozachyna and Makar said they could not have sent the case to trial within five days because they first needed to give the judges’ lawyers sufficient time to study the case files, which could take at least three months.
Lawyer Vitaly Tytych told the Kyiv Post that by law, the prosecutors were required to send the case to trial before the deadline for it to stand a chance of moving forward. He believes that courts will likely reject the case and it will be buried.
A previous, separate case against Vovk was destroyed in a similar fashion by a judge who refused to extend the investigation. In August 2019, the Prosecutor General’s Office charged Vovk and other judges of his court with obstruction of justice.
However, in November 2019, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi Court rejected a motion to extend the obstruction of justice 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 was effectively buried.
In July 2020, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) resurrected the case by charging Vovk with organized crime, usurpation of power, bribery and unlawful interference with government officials.
The bureau asked Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to authorize an arrest warrant for Vovk for months but she refused.
Responding to accusations of sabotage, Venediktova said on March 17 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.
For months, Vovk has ignored the summonses that NABU sent him. The NABU has also obtained court warrants to bring Vovk to bail hearings by force several times but the judge always hid from the bureau.
