Former head of the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal Pavlo Vovk was unable to be reinstated to his post
The final decision was handed down by the Grand Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court.
The court upheld the decision of the High Council of Justice (HCJ), which had dismissed Vovk.
Vovk’s defence team had requested that the proceedings be stayed. In particular, lawyer Valeria Lutkovska insisted that, under the law, members of the HJC’s disciplinary chamber who had taken a particular decision should not take part in the plenary session at which that decision was being reviewed. However, the HCJ clarified this rule in its rules of procedure and ruled that only those members of the disciplinary chamber who had directly considered the specific decision being appealed may not take part.
The High Council of Justice rejected the allegations and assured that this clarification does not breach the rules of procedure but merely clarifies the law, based on previous decisions of the Supreme Court.
Lutkovska also stated that the three-year limitation period for bringing proceedings had already expired. Later, according to the lawyer, the High Council of Justice applied the new version of the law ‘retroactively’, which altered the rules for calculating time limits.
The High Council of Justice responded that all the defence’s procedural objections had already been assessed on numerous occasions by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court. They emphasised that the defence was miscalculating the time limits and confusing a ‘disciplinary case’ with ‘disciplinary proceedings’. A representative of the High Council of Justice insisted that everything had been completed within the three-year time limit.
Ultimately, the court sided with the High Council of Justice and refused to adjourn the hearing.
The Pavlo Vovk case: what is known
Pavlo Vovk headed the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court for over 10 years. Back in 2019, the Prosecutor’s Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) launched an investigation into the court’s interference in the work of state bodies.
The prosecution service stated at the time that the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court’s leadership was exerting pressure on members of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, members of the Verkhovna Rada, staff of the State Bureau of Investigations, judges of the Constitutional Court (in cases concerning the annulment of liability for illicit enrichment and in the lustration case) and members of the Central Election Commission.
In 2020, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) notified Pavlo Vovk and several other judges that they were under suspicion of attempting to usurp judicial power in the country and of issuing tailored rulings in favour of political elites and businessmen. As evidence, the investigators published recordings of conversations between judges of the Kyiv District Administrative Court.
On 9 December, the US imposed sanctions on Vovk and two of his closest relatives — “for extorting bribes in exchange for interference in judicial and other state processes”.
In 2022, the Rada dissolved the Kyiv City Administrative Court, and in March 2025, Vovk was dismissed from his post for a disciplinary offence.
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