This story began back in July last year. NGL.media was approached by a legal counsel of one of the military units stationed in the south of Ukraine. Within a short period of time, about a dozen servicemen of that unit submitted a letter of resignation from the army on the grounds that after a divorce they remained the sole guardians of their minor children. The legal counsel suspected that these divorces were fictitious, especially since all decisions were made by the same court.
During the investigation, NGL.media was able to confirm the validity of these suspicions. To do this, we had to analyze almost 30 thousand similar cases considered by Ukrainian courts in 2021-2023. We found that the vast majority of divorces with the subsequent deprivation of the mother’s right to raise the child in favor of the father were fictitious – and judges understood this. Such decisions are made all over the country, but more than 30% in one particular court – the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi City District Court.
However, in September, several days before the scheduled publication, the NABU contacted our editorial team and urged us to hold the article, as they were conducting their own investigation and NGL.media’s publication could undermine it.
The difficulty was that the judges were formally making legitimate decisions, so the only way to prove malice was to catch them red-handed while they were taking bribes. Therefore, over the next few months, the NABU was preparing this operation and conducted it on January 9 in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi. Now we can say that the activities of the main persons involved in our investigation have been properly documented, searches have been conducted, and official suspicions have been served.
Mobilization as an incentive for divorce
Until 2022, Ukrainian courts rarely considered family disputes over the child’s place of residence in the event of a divorce, meaning that parents mostly resolved this issue on their own, without a separate appeal to the court. For example, according to an analytical report by the DEJURE Foundation and JurFem, in 2019, there were only 589 such court decisions in total, and only 133 of them were made in favor of the father.
One of the authors of this study, Khrystyna Kit, head of the NGO Association of Women Lawyers of Ukraine “JurFem”, explains these figures by the fact that men rarely filed lawsuits to determine their children’s place of residence.
Click the infographic to open a full-size window
“They initiated such suits in very rare cases. Therefore, if you analyze the data from our study, you will see that there are mostly cases filed by women. The court upheld these claims because the woman took the initiative to have the child live with her,” explained Khrystyna Kit.
In 2022, the situation changed dramatically: 859 men received court decisions on cohabitation and child support in their favor. And in 2023, 2708 such decisions were recorded in Ukrainian courts.
This data shows that men are now taking the initiative. In their report, analysts from the DEJURE Foundation suggest that this is due to regular mobilization and the opportunity for men to leave the country.
“We don’t have enough data to make a definite statement about this cause-and-effect relationship, but we have seen a clear trend of increasing the number of cases where parents apply for their child to live with them,” says DEJURE analyst Kateryna Hryshchenko. “In addition to mobilization, there have been no other significant additional factors that could have such an impact in recent years.
However, NGL.media has found direct evidence that the trend noted by analysts is indeed related to the introduction of martial law and mobilization.
Special court
Located 80 kilometers from Odesa on the banks of the estuary, Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi has become a real mecca for Ukrainian men seeking to divorce and legalize their children’s residence with them through the courts, while also receiving protection from mobilization and the ability to travel abroad. Last year alone, the local court made 853 decisions in favor of the father regarding the child’s place of residence.
Of course, the number of such decisions has increased in courts across the country, but the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi City District Court clearly stands out from the crowd – more than 30% of the decisions of the entire Ukrainian judicial system have been made by this small court.
Click the infographic to open a full-size window
It seems that in a city with a population of less than 50,000 people, women are losing their maternal instincts on a large scale, doesn’t it? However, the documents analyzed by NGL.media show that lawsuits are filed with the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi City District Court from all over the country – from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Lviv, and even the Carpathian village of Iablunytsia. According to the NABU source, this was made possible, in particular, through concluding fictitious housing lease agreements in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi district.
“This illegal scheme has become so widespread due to the cooperation of judges with the scheme, which led to the intensification of lawyers’ efforts in this direction, as well as the possibility of disguising the illegal mechanism of issuing court decisions under the alleged provision of legal aid by lawyers. Recognition of the claims by all parties, which guarantees the absence of an appeal”, explains the NGL.media’s source.
A typical example is the case of Ihor and Uliana Verkhogliad, a 36-year-old couple from Kyiv. According to the court’s decision, their minor child has been living with her father for several years, and the mother “has withdrawn herself from fulfilling her parental duties for the upbringing and maintenance of the child”. On this basis, Ihor Verkhogliad asked to “take the child away from the mother without deprivation of parental rights” and judge Serhii Savytsky ruled in his favor. Over the past year, this judge has already made 312 such decisions, although in the previous two years, he had made none.
Instead, Uliana Verkhogliad’s social media shows that she is actually a caring mother and wife. She actively posts family photos of her, her husband and daughter on vacation together, visiting relatives for Easter, and publishes photos with her daughter from a Turkish hotel. Uliana Verkhogliad refused to comment for this article.
On condition of anonymity, one of the men who fictitiously divorced and won the right to child support in court told NGL.media that he really intended to avoid mobilization and travel abroad if necessary. To support his position in court, he had to collect written testimonies from neighbors and friends that his wife had not been living with the children for a long time, although this was obviously not true. Our interlocutor refused to talk about the financial side of the case, but said that it was only about the lawyer’s fee, because everything was completely legal.
And this is indeed true. According to Art. 26 of the Law On Military Duty and Military Service and Art. 23 “On mobilization training and mobilization,” if a father raises and maintains a child on his own, he receives a deferral from mobilization until the child reaches the age of majority.
Three million dollars a year
NGL.media found an unusual concentration of such cases in the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi City District Court, which made more than 850 such decisions in 2023, which is more than 30% of all decisions in the country.
Almost all of these decisions were made by just four judges of this court – the chairman, Oleksandr Boyarskyi (364), Serhii Savytskyi (312), Valentyn Zaveriukha (124), and Yuliia Shevchuk (30).
How do they explain it? NGL.media planned to get comments from the said judges before publication, but, as mentioned above, we abandoned this intention at the request of NABU detectives. These judges are currently unavailable for comment.
Oleksandr Boyarskyi, head of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi City District Court (until October 2023) (photo by Law and Business)
According to the NABU, the organizer of this scheme to avoid mobilization of men is the former head of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi City District Court, Oleksandr Boyarskyi. So far, three judges, as well as lawyers and intermediaries, have been confirmed to be involved in the scheme.
“Among other things, they were searching for people willing to obtain a fictitious court decision, through advertising in social networks, including TikTok, Telegram messenger, as well as through personal contacts”, one of the NABU detectives in charge of the case told NGL.media.
According to him, such a service cost $3,500 or more, which clients paid to lawyers under official legal aid agreements, and the lawyers passed the money on to judges.
Taking into account the number of decisions of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi with signs of fictitiousness in the past year alone (853), the total annual “revenue” of the organizers of the scheme can be estimated at three million US dollars.
And who are the judges?
The former head of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi City District Court, Oleksandr Boyarskyi, oddly enough, is still under investigation for another case. Two years ago, SBI detectives caught him in an attempted fraud, but the case is not yet over – the last ruling is dated May 2023. At the end of 2021, the High Council of Justice even removed Boyarsky from the bench, but two months later he returned to his post. In October 2023, Valentyn Zaveriukha replaced him as the head of the court, and Boyarsky was transferred to the position of a judge.
The current head of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi City District Court, Valentyn Zaveriukha (photo by USI)
Boyarsky is well known to local journalists. Back in 2017, Odesa media wrote about the discrepancy between his standard of living and his official salary. In response, the judge publicly stated, that journalists were simply jealous of him.
Little is known about judge Serhii Savytskyi – his name can only be found in the court schedules. But two other judges were mentioned in local media publications. In 2019, Valentyn Zaveriukha claimed threats because of his professional activities; in the same year, the NACP checked his 2016 declaration and found inaccurate information, which was treated as simple mistakes.
In 2020, Yulia Shevchuk was attacked in her home by robbers who severely beat her and stole jewelry worth UAH 150,000. A few weeks later, the police detained the robbers.
This material was prepared with the financial support from National Endowment for Democracy. The publication contents is a sole responsibility of the editorial team and does not reflect the views of National Endowment for Democracy
