Honourable escape: how DACK judge Kuzmenko avoided assessment and secured lifetime payments - 1C454

Newsroom

Pavlo Vovk may renew his attorney license
Pavlo Vovk may renew his attorney license

A path into the legal profession is opening up for Pavlo Vovk after the Supreme Court refused to reinstate him as a judge. Vovk suspended his right to practice law back in 2007, but he can renew it very quickly. Pavlo Vovk would then join the team of Lidia Izovitova and Andriy Yermak, and together&h...

Vovk finally dismissed from the position of judge
Vovk finally dismissed from the position of judge

On June 18, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the High Council of Justice to dismiss Pavlo Vovk, the former head of the liquidated District Administrative Court of Kyiv. The Court denied Vovk’s request for reinstatement to the position of judge. This ruling puts an...

Rule of law on the path to the EU: DEJURE and AntAC held a briefing for international partners
Rule of law on the path to the EU: DEJURE and AntAC held a briefing for international partners

Today, June 17, the DEJURE Foundation and the Anti-Corruption Action Centre held a briefing for international partners on rule-of-law reforms on Ukraine’s path to the EU. The event took place after the official opening of the negotiating cluster “Fundamentals” for Ukraine. It is...

Most Ukrainians Support Continuing Judicial Reform Despite Wartime Challenges, New Survey Finds
Most Ukrainians Support Continuing Judicial Reform Despite Wartime Challenges, New Survey Finds

A new nationwide survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) at the request of the DEJURE Foundation shows strong public support for continuing judicial reform despite Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. The findings also reveal widespread dissatisfaction with the pa...

EU negotiations begin with “Fundamentals”: what this means for judicial reform
EU negotiations begin with “Fundamentals”: what this means for judicial reform

The EU has opened the main negotiating cluster for Ukraine — “Fundamentals.” This is where the actual assessment of the state’s readiness for membership begins. The European Union has officially approved the opening of accession negotiations with Ukraine. On June 15, 2026, consid...

Attorneys are collecting signatures to unblock the Congress of Attorneys
Attorneys are collecting signatures to unblock the Congress of Attorneys

The Congress of Attorneys of Ukraine may finally be held. At the congress, which was supposed to take place back in 2022, the head of the Bar Council of Ukraine (BCU) and the National Bar Association of Ukraine (NBAU), members of the BCU and other bar governance bodies were to be re-elected. However...

The Supreme Court reinstates Vovk’s ally Mazur to the bench
The Supreme Court reinstates Vovk’s ally Mazur to the bench

The Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court has overturned the decision to dismiss Alyona Mazur from her position as judge. Mazur is a judge of the infamous Kyiv District Administrative Court (DACK) who: sabotaged the qualification assessment at Vovk’s direction, which is why the High Council of Ju...

Imitation instead of reforms: MPs turned the judicial integrity check into a formality
Imitation instead of reforms: MPs turned the judicial integrity check into a formality

The Verkhovna Rada adopted in the second reading draft law No. 13165-2, which was supposed to improve the mechanism for verifying judges’ integrity declarations. However, in its current version, the document does not strengthen the verification — on the contrary, it preserves old loopholes a...

The Committee on Legal Policy backed a bill that raises judges’ pay and destroys the verification of their integrity
The Committee on Legal Policy backed a bill that raises judges’ pay and destroys the verification of their integrity

Today, the Committee on Legal Policy finally completed its preparations for the second reading of Bill No. 13165-2, which was supposed to improve the mechanism for verifying judges’ integrity declarations. In these declarations, judges confirm annually that they live within their official inco...

Vovk’s return is not going to happen? The Supreme Court has ruled in a similar case
Vovk’s return is not going to happen? The Supreme Court has ruled in a similar case

The Supreme Court has upheld the High Council of Justice’s decision to dismiss judge Serhiy Burkhan. This case is directly linked to the case of former head of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv, Pavlo Vovk — in both instances, the grounds for the judges’ dismissal were material...

Judges with integrity reservations in line for lifetime payments, the High Council of Justice votes “yes”
Judges with integrity reservations in line for lifetime payments, the High Council of Justice votes “yes”

Scandalous judge of the District Administrative Court of the city of Kyiv (DACK), Natalia Dobrivska, has become the next in line among the low-integrity judges to receive from the High Council of Justice a green light to lifetime payments of at least UAH 63,000 per month. The judge may also receive...

Honourable escape: how DACK judge Kuzmenko avoided assessment and secured lifetime payments
Honourable escape: how DACK judge Kuzmenko avoided assessment and secured lifetime payments

The High Council of Justice (HCJ) has retired judge Anna Kuzmenko of the dissolved District Administrative Court of Kyiv (DACK), who had been issuing rulings at the direction of the court’s former notorious head, Pavlo Vovk. Kuzmenko is 43 years old and will now receive a lifetime monthly allo...

Load more