You're reading: Controversial judge Vovk defies anti-corruption body NABU

Pavlo Vovk, the head of the Kyiv Administrative District Court and one of Ukraine’s most notoriously controversial judges, defied the new charges brought against him.

On July 17, National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) brought new charges against several notorious top judges, most notably Vovk, and searched the premises of the court.

Vovk and five other judges were charged with organized crime, usurpation of power, bribery and unlawful interference in the work of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, according to the Kyiv Post sources.

Vovk reacted to the charges on July 18. He denied the accusations and called the NABU actions an attempt to put pressure on the court. He said he was not handed over a formal notice of suspicion because he is on a leave from work.

“I am now on vacation, after which I will prove my truth in a legal way and in accordance with the law,” he wrote on Facebook.

Vovk also wrote he will not resign, and called the charges politically motivated.

These aren’t the first charges against Vovk and other judges of the notorious court. They were first charged with obstructing justice in July 2019 but continued carrying out their duties. The High Council of Justice refused to suspend Vovk, which experts claimed was due to his political connections.

In recordings published by NABU, and released on July 19 by Ukrainska Pravda, voices alleged to belong to Vovk and other judges discuss receiving bribes for favorable rulings,  arranging fake lawsuits to suspend the authority of the members of the High Qualification Commission, a state body selecting and vetting judges, and holding fake competitions to replace them.

They also discuss a plan to get mobile phone data of a journalist of Slidstvo.Info investigative journalism agency who covers corruption in courts, to find out who was leaking her information.

In his Facebook post, Vovk called the recordings “fake” and joked that they should be “more creative next time.”

This is the latest chapter in a long-running story of charges pressed against top judges in Ukraine.

In August 2019, the Prosecutor General’s Office pressed its first charges against Vovk and two other judges of his court, Yevhen Ablov, and Igor Pohribinchenko, as well as against Ivan Shepitko, a judge on Odesa’s Suvorovsky District Court.

According to the previous summons, the judges have also been investigated for forgery, abuse of power, negligence, bribery, and issuing unlawful rulings against protesters during the EuroMaidan Revolution.