Justice without punishment: how top defendants and judges massively avoid accountability through statutes of limitations

Justice without punishment: how top defendants and judges massively avoid accountability through statutes of limitations

What do the cases of the former head of the State Judicial Administration, a Kharkiv judge, a co-conspirator of Nasirov, the former chief architect of Kyiv and the CEO of a scandal-ridden developer have in common?

Correct — they were all closed due to statutes of limitations.

This was reported by Ukrainska Pravda.

In particular, in July 2026 the court closed the case of former State Fiscal Service official Lyudmyla Solotva, who was accused of assisting former SFS head Roman Nasirov. 10 years had passed since the commission of the crime, so the statute of limitations expired.

A similar story concerns Dzerzhinsky District Court judge of Kharkiv Serhiy Lazyuk, who was accused of bribery. He also avoided punishment due to expiration of the statute of limitations. This is despite the fact that the High Anti-Corruption Court had already sentenced him in 2022 to 7 years’ imprisonment with confiscation of property. However, after the verdict, in 2023 the judge was mobilized into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Because of this, proceedings were suspended. Nothing happened in the case for two years and, ultimately, in November 2025 the statute of limitations in the case expired.

Another example is a figure from the "Vovk tapes", former head of the State Judicial Administration Zenovii Kholodniuk. He avoided possible punishment for abuse of influence. Kholodniuk was accused of facilitating the appointment of a candidate loyal to OASK head Pavlo Vovk to the position of member of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine. In this case the court was also forced to close the proceedings due to expiration of the statute of limitations.

The same happened with the case of former chief architect of Kyiv Serhiy Tselovalnyk and the CEO of the scandalous developer UkrBud Development, Oleh Maiboroda. According to the prosecution’s version, Kyiv authorities leased land in the city center to a private firm. It was supposed to build an apartment building with a pool for Secondary School No. 130. After a few years construction stopped due to lack of funds, but later the developer took on completing the project. Only instead of the promised pool for the schoolchildren a multi-level parking garage appeared, from which the private company gained illegal profit. However, because the statute of limitations expired, the case was closed.

And if you think this concerns only top corruption cases, where defendants can usually afford expensive lawyers who know how to drag out the process, that is far from the case.

Here are similar examples from the regions just recently:

- in Zhytomyr the court closed a bribery case against the former head of the regional State GeoCadastre, which had been pending for 10 years;

- in Kirovohrad region the court closed the case of a village head accused of bribery and illegal leasing of land. It had been ongoing since 2016;

- in Lviv the court closed a case concerning a tax official accused of receiving several bribes and fraud;

- in Kropyvnytskyi the case of a judge of the Fortetskyi District Court accused of fraud was closed.

The reason is the same — the statute of limitations expired. And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of such examples.

Closure of a case does not always mean that guilt was not proven or that there is no corpus delicti — that is, rehabilitating grounds. Often criminal proceedings are closed precisely because the statute of limitations has expired. In that case we effectively lose the opportunity to find out whether the defendant is guilty or not. The state must release them from liability, and to punish them, even if guilt were proven, is already impossible. The exception is if the defendant himself wishes the case to be heard to completion and a verdict to be issued. But even if the court finds him guilty, he will still be exempted from punishment due to expiration of the statute of limitations. So the defense risks nothing in such a retrial.

Transparency International Ukraine, in its report on six years of HACC work, notes that in 2024 - 2025 13 persons were released from criminal liability due to expiration of statutes of limitations, and over the next 3 years another 26 corruption cases face the threat of closure.

Moreover, as the chair of the Verkhovna Rada Anti‑Corruption Committee Anastasiia Radina claims, the SAPO refers about 120 cases to HACC each year, but the court issues only about 70 verdicts. By the end of 2025 HACC had accumulated 327 pending cases, and 60% of them had been under consideration for more than a year. Since 2019 64 cases have already been closed due to expired statutes of limitations, and the average consideration in two instances lasts about three years.

So how are the statutes counted, what do they depend on, and when are they suspended?

The starting point in all criminal cases is the day the criminal offense was committed, which depends on the specifics of each crime. For example, in a bribery case the statute is counted from the moment the money was received, while in a case of declaring false information it is from the day the declaration with "false" data was submitted.

The duration of statutes also depends on the severity of the criminal offense. To pass a verdict for a minor offense the state has only 5 years from the date it was committed, while a person can be punished for receiving a bribe in an especially large amount within 15 years.

At first glance the statutes are quite long — in 5, 10, 15 years one can finish school or university or rise to a leadership position from scratch. That is why the European Convention in Article 6 places the accused's rights first. This provision regulates the right to a fair trial, and one of its components is the reasonable time for consideration of a case. In the European Court’s understanding, "rubber" processes put the accused into a state of uncertainty, because life under criminal prosecution significantly worsens and rights and freedoms are restricted. Therefore the state is obliged to operate within limits that must exist but are not always sufficient.

Our procedural law provides some safeguards in case a suspect or accused behaves improperly. For example, if a person commits a new crime of a certain type before the statute expires, the limitation period is interrupted. And if the offender evades investigation or the court, statutes are suspended. Currently NABU is searching for defendants in 60 corruption cases. The oldest unresolved wanted notice on the site appeared 10 years ago — in the case of gas embezzlement at PJSC Ukrgazvydobuvannia for 3 billion UAH. In that case, if not for legal mechanisms, statutes of limitations would already be "burning out."

But not all defendants flee abroad, and not everyone commits a new crime while under investigation’s scrutiny. During the full-scale invasion another way to avoid punishment appeared — "voluntary" mobilization into the Defense Forces of Ukraine. Simply put, those accused of corruption hide from justice in the army. Under the Criminal Procedure Code, the court suspends proceedings if the accused is mobilized, and resumes hearings only after his release from military service. Meanwhile the statutes of limitations for bringing to responsibility continue to run. Because of this feature, dozens of corruption defendants can avoid potential punishment.

Statutes continue to run until a verdict takes legal effect — and here is an important nuance. When the media report that HACC sentenced someone to so many years’ imprisonment, that does not yet mean the verdict has taken legal effect.

Back in 1999 the Constitutional Court examined the phenomenon of parliamentary immunity and simultaneously determined that bringing to criminal responsibility has several stages and begins from the moment of notification of suspicion and ends when the verdict takes legal effect. Our legislation clearly provides that a verdict takes legal effect either after the expiration of the appeal period, or after a final decision by the appellate instance.

And before that "taking legal effect of the verdict" begins one of the defense’s most complex games.

How cases are delayed: from "playing dumb" to multi-step maneuvers

There are many ways to delay the consideration of a case for years. The most primitive are abuses of procedural rights: fake sick leaves, invented respectable reasons for nonappearance, communication failures, sudden engagement of a lawyer in another case, unfounded recusals and motions, and much more. But there are also more monumental and original methods.

Abuse of the right to defense, or rather, endless replacements of lawyers. Yes, the right to defense is absolute, and defendants know this well. So they constantly look for a "like‑minded person," sometimes changing lawyers dozens of times during proceedings. Former judge Lyudmyla Saltan, already convicted, once changed her defender right during a hearing: he was waiting for her SMS outside the courtroom door, and when he entered he even misspelled the defendant’s surname in the contract.

Such replacements become a huge problem, because new defenders each time need time to familiarize themselves with numerous materials — especially if there are several defendants. For example, in the OASK case there are nine defendants, and each sometimes has two defenders.

In that same OASK case one of the defendants, already at the pre-trial stage, engaged a lawyer with visual impairments and demanded that 220 volumes of materials be translated into Braille. And during the court proceedings one hearing was disrupted because a defender did not attend the hearing, having taken a child to an aqua park.

Performing military service, the desire for which often arises during criminal prosecution. And it arises not nobly — but to stop proceedings and delay consideration. The problem is that if mobilized, statutes are not suspended along with the proceedings. And even if the accused can technically participate in hearings while in service, that does not mean he will appear. Communication problems, urgent service tasks — and the hearing is postponed again.

Former judge of the Kyiv Court of Appeal Ihor Petryk, who was caught with a bribe of 5 thousand dollars, was mobilized back in 2022. Proceedings were suspended until May 2023, but Petryk did not leave the service and obstructed justice in other ways: constant postponements of hearings due to alerts, sick leaves, and changes of defenders. Petryk also had other unpredictable circumstances. For example, the transport he was taking to court broke down. And once Petryk allegedly forgot a bag on a minibus and spent the entire time allotted for the hearing riding around the city looking for that minibus. The cherry on top was postponing hearings due to a "combat" wound that Petryk actually received during unauthorized absence from the military unit.

By the way, air raid alerts, as the court found, mattered for Petryk only during hearings. When they ended he freely walked the city instead of staying in shelter. This was confirmed by analysis of his phone connections correlated with the map of alerts: the judge almost never hid. Petryk has now been taken into custody, and the case moved faster. The verdict was handed down on 9 July, but an appeal still lies ahead, which must be completed by early December.

Because of such "strategic decisions," among the cases against judges monitored by Automaidan, the following remain at risk of closure in the next two years:

● the case of judge Roman Potapenko, who, according to the prosecution, 15 August 2017 received a bribe from lawyer Anatolii Voronkin for issuing an acquittal. The indictment was sent to court on 23 January 2018, and in May 2022 Potapenko was placed on the wanted list, which suspended the running for a year. When Potapenko was found, proceedings resumed, but there is still no verdict, and little time remains, until 15 August 2027;

● the case of judge Ihor Minaiev, which has already been 4 years suspended at the appeal stage. According to the prosecutor’s data, in 26 September 2017 he received a bribe for not bringing a person to administrative liability. By 5 September 2018 the case was already in court. HACC announced its verdict on 4 February 2022, the appeal — frozen, and statutes expire already 26 September 2027;

● the case of judge Hennadii Moliboga and lawyer Ihor Serikov, who are accused of receiving a bribe on 14 December 2017 for not bringing a person to administrative liability. The indictment was sent to court on 6 August 2018, HACC announced a verdict on 2 December 2025, and statutes already expire on 14 December 2027. The case is now on appeal, but Moliboga stopped appearing at hearings — for which he received financial penalties — and ceased communicating due to proximity of his location to the front line.

*We deliberately indicate exact dates. They show that law enforcement in these cases did not delay — investigations and transfer of materials to court were completed within a year. However even such promptness by detectives and prosecutors did not save the cases from the threat of closure. That is, the problem often arises during the trial and depends on the behavior of the defense.

Problems have no statute of limitations. So how to solve them?

Analyzing the reasons for closing cases due to statutes of limitations, we conclude that a systemic and comprehensive approach is needed.

First of all it is necessary to influence the behavior of participants, in particular the defense side: endless no‑shows without reasons, fake sick leaves and vacations, unfounded recusals and motions. For this it is worth expanding the court’s already existing levers of influence in legislation.

Currently, if the accused does not appear for a court summons, a monetary penalty is imposed. This is a good tool, but in corruption cases and given the material condition of their defendants — not very effective. The size of such "fines" ranges from 0,5 (1 664 UAH) to 2 (6 656 UAH) living wages. For defendants in multi‑billion schemes, MPs, ministers and other top officials this amount is not very felt. Therefore, to strengthen the effectiveness of monetary penalties, indexing them fairly would be appropriate, taking into account the real economic situation in the country, and the person’s property status, as is successfully practiced when determining bail amounts in top corruption cases.

There is another mechanism — disciplinary proceedings against prosecutors or lawyers, in particular for skipping court sessions. Unfortunately judges rarely use this, and so far it has not shown real effectiveness, although it has potential. Professional participants in the process must feel reputational risks when they choose deliberate delay of the process instead of a convincing evidentiary strategy. In our view, the threat of disciplinary sanction for a prosecutor or loss of the right to practice for a lawyer should deter the desire to abuse procedural rights. However in practice, from dozens of judges’ appeals of HACC regarding lawyers, only a few have been held accountable.

If one can fight "small steps" toward delay with measures already provided in procedural law, mobilization into the Armed Forces is somewhat different, but still solvable.

On 26 June members of parliament introduced draft law No. 15354 to the Verkhovna Rada, which proposes to suspend statutes of limitations for the time defendants serve in the military if the cases are investigated by NABU detectives or have already been sent to court by SAPO prosecutors. They propose to resume the running either from the moment of release from military service, or from the moment the court resumes proceedings.

Such amendments to the Criminal Code would be fair. Because the desire to serve Ukraine should arise from sincere intentions and patriotism, not from a desire to avoid justice.

There is a second proposal — aimed at combating the global problem of case closures due to statutes of limitations specifically in corruption proceedings. The idea is this: to stop the running of the statute of limitations for grave and especially grave corruption crimes from the moment the indictment is sent to court. Lawmakers believe this would deprive defendants of the ability and incentive to delay trial proceedings, because the result would inevitably come regardless of their behavior. And to prevent prosecutors from abusing this and submitting poor‑quality materials, the running of the statute is proposed to be resumed if the court returns the indictment for revision.

This initiative is important both for Ukraine’s European course and for justice and strengthening anti‑corruption bodies. The danger of corruption offenses lies precisely in resources — finances and connections — that allow subjects to avoid justice for years and feel comfortable while doing so.

However, risks must be carefully assessed. Because if the statute of limitations is stopped from the moment the indictment is sent to court, this may cause disputes and applications to the ECHR by defendants. The reason is the same Article 6 of the Convention and how our statutes are currently structured. If they stop only at the final stage — that is, when the verdict takes legal effect — then stopping them in selective cases at earlier stages may look like legislative inconsistency and a violation of the Convention.

Therefore the provisions should be drafted so that they align with the concept of a reasonable time for consideration of a case. States parties to the Convention have wide discretion in reforming their laws, including statutes of limitations. The only restriction concerns the prohibition on applying such changes to acts for which the statute of limitations has already expired at the moment the new provisions enter into force.

For example, Italy has a unique two‑layer system, when the main statute of limitations is suspended after the first‑instance verdict (the so‑called "Bonafede law"). At the same time the duration of appeal and cassation is limited by strict deadlines (the so‑called "Cartabia reform").

Such frameworks for reviewing cases were introduced so that the accused would not become a "perpetually accused": if appellate or cassation courts do not meet these deadlines, the case is considered procedurally inadmissible — which effectively means its closure. Meanwhile the first‑instance verdict immediately and permanently stops the running of the main statute of limitations.

The judicial process in Ukraine is an extremely complex mechanism. It withstands heavy loads, power outages, air raid alerts, and other objective factors that already take a lot of time on the road to fair and reasoned decisions. Therefore it is so important at the legislative level to prevent tricks and manipulations to delay proceedings — both by the defense and by the prosecution. We want to see zero tolerance from the court for such antics and the development of counter‑measures — both those already provided by our procedural legislation and potentially new norms that will strengthen the court’s ability to resist abuse of procedural rights.

And may justice prevail through the years.

Author: Daria Nosik, lawyer of the All‑Ukrainian Union "Automaidan"