Two Supreme Court judges recommended for dismissal, but one of them may manage to resign first

The Third Disciplinary Chamber has moved to dismiss Supreme Court judges Iryna Hryhorieva and Zhanna Yelenina. The Disciplinary Chamber voted unanimously for this decision; the rapporteur in the case was HCJ member Oleh Kandziuba.

Both judges were implicated in the case of the nearly $3 million bribe that then-President of the Supreme Court Vsevolod Kniaziev was caught taking. He was supposed to pass part of the money on to other Supreme Court judges. After Kniaziev was exposed, NABU also carried out searches in the offices of other judges. Kniaziev later entered into a plea agreement with the investigation and gave incriminating testimony about Supreme Court judges, among them both Yelenina and Hryhorieva.

The Disciplinary Chamber’s decision can still be appealed by these judges to the HCJ. And it is precisely here that the risk arises of the procedure being dragged out.

Iryna Hryhorieva is approaching the mandatory retirement age for a judge — 65 — and will therefore be entitled to retire on grounds of age. The HCJ must manage to consider her case at a plenary session before that point. If Hryhorieva terminates her powers earlier due to age, the Disciplinary Chamber’s dismissal decision will effectively lose any practical significance for her — and the judge will retire with a lifetime state allowance.

We have already seen situations in which the dragging out of disciplinary procedures allowed judges to leave office before the question of their liability was resolved. In Hryhorieva’s case, this risk is already entirely real.

If the judges appeal the Disciplinary Chamber’s decision, the HCJ must consider the case at a plenary session without delay. That is when it will become clear whether the Chamber’s work will have real consequences, or whether the HCJ will effectively reduce its results to nothing.