The former chairman of the now-liquidated Kyiv District Administrative Court (KDAC) Pavlo Vovk was unable to return to his position.
The final decision was made by the Grand Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC).
The court left unchanged the decision of the High Council of Justice (HCJ), which released Vovk.
Vovkʼs defense requested that the case be suspended. In particular, lawyer Valeria Lutkovska insisted that, by law, members of the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice who made a certain decision should not participate in the plenary session where this decision is being reviewed.
However, the Supreme Court clarified this rule in its regulations and decided that only those members of the disciplinary chamber who directly considered the decision being appealed may not participate.
The Supreme Court of Justice rejected the accusations and assured that this clarification does not violate the regulations and only clarifies the law, relying on previous decisions of the Supreme Court.
Lutkovska also stated that the three-year term for bringing to justice had already passed. Later, according to the lawyer, the High Council of Justice applied a new version of the law "retroactively", which changed the rule for calculating terms.
The Supreme Court responded that all procedural claims of the defense had already been assessed by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court more than once. They emphasized that the defense was incorrectly calculating the time limits and confusing a “disciplinary case” with a “disciplinary proceeding”. The Supreme Court representative insisted that everything was within the three-year time limit.
Ultimately, the court sided with the Supreme Court of Justice and refused to postpone the case.
The case of Pavlo Vovk
Pavlo Vovk headed KDAC for over 10 years. Back in 2019, the prosecutorʼs office and NABU launched an investigation into the courtʼs interference in the work of state bodies.
The prosecutorʼs office said at the time that the KDAC leadership was swayed by members of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, employees of the State Bureau of Investigation, judges of the Constitutional Court (in cases on the abolition of liability for illicit enrichment and in the lustration case), and members of the Central Election Commission.
In 2020, NABU reported Pavlo Vovk and several other judges on suspicion of attempting to usurp judicial power in the country and making custom decisions in favor of political elites and businessmen. As evidence, the investigation published recordings of conversations of judges of the Supreme Judicial Council.
On December 9, the US imposed sanctions against Vovk and two of his closest relatives "for extorting bribes in exchange for interfering in judicial and other government processes".
In 2022, the Verkhovna Rada liquidated KDAC, and in March 2025,Vovk was dismissed from his post for disciplinary misconduct.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.