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 allowance of at least UAH 65,000 and a one-time severance payment of UAH 390,000.

In 2019, Kuzmenko, along with 30 other DACK judges, sabotaged the qualification assessment. The so-called “DACK tapes” make it clear that this occurred with the approval and at the direction of former DACK head Pavlo Vovk:

Vovk: — Do you want to go to the psychological tests?

Kuzmenko: — Taking into account.

Vovk: — Are you ready for them?

Kuzmenko: — Taking into account sixty-six pages of the NABU reference and everything in there, in principle, I am never ready to go to the HQCJ.

Vovk: — So then you are sick, starting.

Kuzmenko: — From the 8th?

Vovk: — From Monday, and you are sick for 10 days.

Kuzmenko: — Alright. Have a good day.

The recordings also capture Vovk arranging on two separate occasions for Kuzmenko not to be held accountable by the HCJ. During one such conversation, the judge asks Vovk:

Kuzmenko: “There is a complaint about me at the HCJ, Malovatsky Alexei (the rapporteur in the case). Could you ask? They might screw me.”

Vovk: “I will pay attention, everything will be fine.”

And so it happened. The HCJ did not hold Kuzmenko accountable — two cases against her were closed.

The same recordings capture Vovk giving the judge instructions on how to act and what decisions to make in the case against the then-head of NABU, Artem Sytnyk.

On the basis of these and other facts, the judge has received a negative opinion from the Public Integrity Council (PIC), which lists numerous instances of her lack of integrity. Kuzmenko is a Maidan judge. She banned peaceful protests in central Kyiv during the Revolution of Dignity. She also suspended the renaming of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, at a time when it was required to indicate its affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church in its name.

Kuzmenko incurred expenses that exceeded her income and, for 3 years, failed to declare her use of an apartment in Kozyn with an area of 327 sq. m.

At the time her retirement was being considered, there were no complaints against Kuzmenko pending before the HCJ that could have halted her “honourable” departure from office. The only real safeguard could have been the completion of her qualification assessment and, should non-compliance be established, a submission by the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ) for the judge’s dismissal.

For three years, Kuzmenko’s qualification assessment had barely moved. In the meantime, the judge accumulated the years of service required for retirement.

And just as her qualification assessment finally began to move forward and an interview was scheduled for April 21, the judge did not appear, citing illness. Yet on that very same day — when she was supposedly ill — Kuzmenko submitted her retirement application.

The judge immediately took a month’s leave so that her qualification assessment could not be completed before her retirement application was reviewed. This looks like an attempt to avoid the assessment.

This demonstrates that the HQCJ must assign priority status to the qualification assessment of DACK judges and those of the notorious Pechersk District Court of Kyiv. This is an effective tool to ensure that judges lacking integrity receive dismissal for their violations rather than lifetime payments.

What does this show?

First, judges are using retirement as a way to escape accountability. If the HQCJ continues to delay qualification assessment, judges lacking integrity — including those from DACK and the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv — who already have sufficient years of service will likewise flee into honourable retirement before the assessment is completed.

Second, the High Council of Justice must prioritise the review of HQCJ submissions for the dismissal of DACK judges, who have already remained pending for a considerable time. These include submissions concerning DACK judges Petro Kovzel, Liubov Marulina, and Maryna Boyaryntseva.

Third, the law must be changed. The period for reviewing a retirement application should not be one month, but at least six months. The law must explicitly provide that if qualification assessment proceedings have already been initiated against a judge, the review of the retirement application must be suspended until the assessment is completed. And all the more so — if a HQCJ submission for the judge’s dismissal is already in place, retirement must not become a tool for escaping accountability.

Until parliament adopts these changes, the state will continue to pay tens — and possibly hundreds — of millions of hryvnias each year to judges lacking integrity, like Kuzmenko, who managed to flee into retirement in time.