Ukraine's anti-corruption court jails former Kharkiv judge for eight years

Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) sentenced a former deputy head of a Kharkiv district court to eight years in prison on 26 October for accepting an unlawful benefit, the court said.

The former judge of the Dzerzhynskyi District Court of Kharkiv was found guilty under Part 3 of Article 368 of the Criminal Code, which covers accepting an unlawful benefit. Besides the prison term, the court barred her from holding posts in judicial and law enforcement bodies for three years and ordered the confiscation of all property she owns. The case number is 991/579/21.

What the case was about

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), working with the anti-corruption and organised crime directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine, exposed the judge in May 2020 receiving USD 4,000, NABU said on its official channel. The money, the bureau said, was for issuing an order that returned to a defendant more than USD 30,000 seized during a pre-trial investigation.

The court also changed her preventive measure from bail to detention until the verdict takes effect and ordered her taken into custody in the courtroom, NABU said. The verdict can be appealed within 30 days of its announcement through the HACC to its Appeals Chamber, and it takes effect after that period if no appeal is filed. Neither release names the former judge, and no statement from her or her defence was published with them.

Two other October verdicts

The sentence follows two other verdicts the court published in October against former officials. On 21 October the HACC found a former head of the State Service of Ukraine on Medicines and Drugs Control guilty of false declaration under Part 2 of Article 366-2, the court said. It fined him UAH 76,500 and barred him for three years from posts with organisational and administrative functions. His annual declarations for 2022 to 2024 left out his use of a 319.9 square metre house and a land plot in Kyiv Region, the court said.

That case grew in part from the full verification of his 2024 declaration by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), the agency said on 28 October. The NACP valued the house and land at over UAH 4.5 million and said they were registered to his wife's parents but used by him and his wife from 2022 to 2024. NABU and SAPO used the NACP's materials in the pre-trial investigation, and that verdict has not yet taken effect either.

On 14 October the court found a former deputy director of Ukraerorukh, the state air traffic services enterprise, guilty of official negligence with grave consequences under Part 2 of Article 367, the court said. It imposed five years in prison, a three-year ban on posts with organisational and administrative functions in state bodies and enterprises and a fine of UAH 12,750, then released him from the sentence because the limitation period had expired. It partly granted Ukraerorukh's civil claim and ordered him to pay the enterprise UAH 90 million.

What the three verdicts show

The three cases use three different articles of the Criminal Code: an unlawful benefit, a false declaration and negligence. They also show the range of penalties the court applies, from a custodial sentence with confiscation to a fine and a ban, and in the negligence case a civil recovery that survives the end of the limitation period. All three verdicts were open to appeal when the court announced them.

The Kharkiv case took more than six years from the 2020 exposure to the first instance verdict.

The court handed down a similar eight-year term in a bribery case this month, covered in the gambling commission verdict. The NACP's declaration checks behind cases like the medicines regulator verdict are counted in its nine-month verification figures.