A successful career of a judge in a coastal city. An unexpected arrest, two days in a detention centre – and all of a sudden, you are a NABU agent undercover. This is how the last year of Oleksandr Boyarskyi, a judge of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi city district court, can be described. However, he still faces a lengthy investigation, court hearing, sentence, and, probably, further quiet life with a clear conscience.
This story started for NGL.media in July 2023, which turned out to be the same timeframe for the NABU detectives. The untimely release of a journalists’ investigation could have damaged the actual one, so we delayed our publication for over four months. This kind of patience, non-typical for journalists, yielded its fruit — Andrii Pidhrushnyi, a NABU detective who headed this investigation, agreed to tell us the details of further events.
The participants of this story turned out to be so cynical that neither the public disclosure nor even the arrest of one judge stopped them.
This investigation has become possible thanks to the participants of the NGL.media community, who have access to special content and possibilities.
But first things first. We can seldom witness the story almost from the inside, so we will try to reconstruct the story of one crime, which is about a scheme of dodging the draft using formal legal court rulings.
NGL.media wrote about this scheme in detail in January 2024. To remind our readers, it is about a fictitious divorce of a family with minor children, when the husband receives court-confirmed custody of their child, and it gives him a deferral from the mobilization.
However, the release of this investigation and the simultaneous arrest of Judge Oleksandr Boyarskyi didn’t end this story. On the contrary – further events took a very unexpected turn.
Investigation. The beginning
The NABU succeeded in investigating the entire scheme and calling judges to account, thanks to a “concerned citizen” who made an official offense report.
A man came to an attorney for a consultation yet received an unexpected offer – to give a bribe for a necessary solution. He decided not to give a bribe but to go to the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) instead. Both his motives and his personality will remain unknown to the public. Yet, it was thanks to him that the investigation was started, and it turned out to be not the accidental attempt of one attorney to make some money, and the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi city district court became the place to implement a common Ukrainian scheme.
“In March 2023, we registered a criminal case based on the information we had. Two months later, in May, we were contacted by our colleagues from the SSU, who told us that they had some information that belonged to the investigative jurisdiction of the NABU. It turned out to be approximately the same information we had had. But the important thing was – they had been contacted by a person who provided them with specific facts about his being a subject of demands for illegal benefits to get the relevant ruling. It allowed us to open another criminal case,” Andrii Pidhrushnyi, a NABU detective, told NGL.media.
The man who contacted the SSU had a good idea of the amount of attorneys’ fees and could count well. He knew that the services of an attorney regarding compiling a claim and participating in court proceedings cost UAH 5–10 thousand. So, when the attorney, Stanislav Klymenko, voiced the fee in the amount of almost UAH 145 thousand (USD 3,500), the man understood that it involved bribing the judge. At least, this was the explanation he gave when contacting the SSU.
It was later found that this money, indeed, was allocated to bribe Oleksandr Boyarskyi, a judge of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi court. He was the first to be arrested in January 2024.
Oleksandr Boyarskyi (photo by Law and Business)
Yet the detention of Boyarskyi was far from anything simple, regardless of the presence of a claimant. It was necessary to register the fact of the judge’s taking a bribe. However, he didn’t take the money personally; in Pidhrushnyi’s words, it was done by the “authorized person”.
Besides, on the judge’s request, this person was to exchange this money at the currency exchange point first and only then bring it to the judge. This was the requirement made by Boyarskyi to the applicant. In the opinion of NABU detectives, in this way, the judge was trying to avoid marked money.
“Since the applicant was “our man”, of course, he didn’t exchange the marked money, but Boyarskyi’s authorized person did exchange it after receiving it from the applicant, and we managed to record it,” Pidhrushnyi explained.
Who is the boss
Among all judges of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi city district court, it is Oleksandr Boyarskyi who has issued the largest number of rulings about determining the child’s residence in favour of husbands. Actually, while we here in NGL.media worked on this scheme, this was the reason why we decided that he was heading it.
But we stood corrected. According to the version of NABU detectives, the scheme was headed by Valentyn Zaveriukha, the chief justice of this court. He was ranked third in our rating of the issued rulings.
Valentyn Zaveriukha (photo by USI)
He was shadowed for a long time. He was not caught with a bribe; instead, in the words of the investigators, he was “led according to the procedure”. The matter is – after Boyarskyi was arrested, Valentyn Zaveriukha stopped considering cases on determining the child’s place of residence immediately.
“I will give it to you in stages! In January [of 2024], we documented the judge [Boyarskyi]. Then we searched the court building. So, everything was known to all the court employees. One can say, everything was disclosed to the entire country,” Andrii Pidhrushnyi, the NABU detective, told in an interview with NGL.media. “Now we can say that we have exposed an organized group. It consisted of three judges, three court employees, an attorney, and an assistant attorney. But it happened not in January, but gradually – in November, December [of 2024] and in February of 2025. These are procedural actions.”
So, since January 9, 2024, the investigation was no longer a secret – everybody knew that the investigators worked in the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi court. Does it mean that the scheme ceased working? No.
“After the NABU exposed one of the judges, one judge refused to take decisions in such cases and didn’t take even one. But the other judge was still doing it till the middle of summer 2024,” the detective said.
Although Valentyn Zaveriukha, the chief justice, refused to consider the cases personally, he was still giving instructions to other participants of the scheme and actively “requesting other judges to take the right decision in cases”. It should be noted that Zaveriukha stopped instructing Oleksandr Boyarskyi, who came back to the court after leaving the detention centre on bail and went on issuing rulings.
“After the judge, exposed and arrested by the NABU, was released on bail, he was willing to cooperate with the law enforcement bodies. His further actions were conducted under the procedural control of the pretrial investigation authority,” Pidhrushnyi gives a laconic explanation of the further course of events.
Voluntary cooperation
When Judge Boyarskyi returned to the court after the suspension, which lasted a total of three months, attorney Stanislav Klymenko contacted him again. He must have suspected that he was being followed. And he could have assumed that Boyarskyi was closely watched by the NABU.
Stanislav Klymenko (photo by Odessit.in.ua)
“Extreme cynicism of some members of the organized group led them to further approach the judge who had been exposed and offer him an undue benefit. He was offered undue benefit several times, which was registered by the pretrial investigation body,” Andrii Pidhrushnyi told us in restrained official terms.
In simple words, the attorney offered a bribe to the judge who had already been under investigation. The judge agreed and started taking bribes again, but this time, he was doing it under the surveillance of the NABU. In this way, Boyarskyi took the “right decisions” in 15 required cases. At that moment, the prices remained the same – USD 3,500 per one case, which makes a total of USD 52.5 thousand. However, the NABU received direct “evidence” for USD 6,000 – when the bribes were received by the judges themselves. That’s when it also became clear that the judge’s share in this scheme was USD 400 per one case.
The results of the previous activity
“We arrested two other judges not on taking a bribe but by results of the previous activity. These are judges, after all, and we realized that the chief justice, and the deputy chief of staff, and other people were involved. We couldn’t come to them with our suspicions, so we selected the strategy of documenting it in stages,” the NABU detective explained.
This stage-wise documentation helped serve Valentyn Zaveriukha, the chief justice, with charge papers in February 2025. However, it turned out that he had already been mobilized to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Based on this fact, he even asked to suspend the disciplinary proceedings against him. However, the High Judicial Council turned down this request, noting that judges are not subject to drafting, and the mobilization of Zaveriukha was voluntary. And this sudden outburst of patriotism, which coincided with the criminal proceedings, looked too transparent.
Valentyn Zaveriukha is suspected not only of receiving bribes but also of organizing an illegal scheme, helping draft-age persons illegally cross the state border, and intruding into the system of automatic distribution for the right cases to get to the right judges.
Today, the judge is suspended from the court system; the measure of his restraint is a bail of UAH 1.75 million. At first, he refused to pay it due to a considerable amount. In the words of his attorneys, he doesn’t have this kind of money since he has several dependants – three children and a wife who used to be in the tourism business in Zatoka, but has lost this possibility now. Therefore, the measure of restraint was immediately changed to “staying in custody” with the possible bail. The judge found the money on the same day. The detective says that the judge didn’t spend a single night in the detention centre.
The lawyers also insist that Zaveriukha wasn’t the organizer of the illegal scheme because he is 18 years younger than Boyarskyi, who has been heading the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi court for many years. Zaveriukha replaced Boyarskyi in the position of the chief justice only in October 2023.
A quiet judge
According to the law enforcement officers, another arrested judge, Serhii Savytskyi, was the last to join the scheme. For this purpose, Valentyn Zaveriukha, the chief justice, even held the meeting of judges, in which he granted Savytskyi the specialization to solve “disputes arising from family law agreements”. It was required for relevant cases to be automatically directed to Savytskyi.
After the official charges, in late February, Savytskyi was detained with the possibility of bail of UAH 1.5 million. And the story of his colleague repeated itself – Savytskyi was also unhappy with the amount of bail but found the money immediately, as soon as he was brought to the detention centre. He didn’t want to spend a night there. He was released on the same day.
Will the rulings be re-considered
The High Judicial Council supported all the NABU’s applications regarding the charges and suspension of judges. They also took a decision on bringing judges to disciplinary responsibility and firing them. But the judges’ attorneys are appealing these decisions now. The pretrial investigation is ongoing.
When will the sentences be pronounced? Probably, not too soon. Will the decisions taken by these judges be re-considered? Maybe, but in any case, each decision will be considered separately. For instance, even now, many of such decisions are appealed by military regiments in cases related to persons who got demobilized based on these decisions. The public prosecutor’s office, as a representative of the state, also has a right to appeal the court rulings.
Does it mean that all the decisions of these judges are doubtful? No. The entire story will not become an automatic reason for discrediting their previous decisions.
“Each individual decision should be considered and solved individually,” the NABU detective emphasizes. “All the decisions were made in the name of Ukraine. They all can’t be considered knowingly wrongful.”
A total of over 1,000 rulings of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi court will have to be reviewed, as the NABU considers them doubtful. Yet, even if these rulings are abolished, the consequences will be minimal because two-thirds of the men who took advantage of them have already left the country without any difficulties.
A total of 14 persons were officially charged in this case. In addition to eight members of the organized group, the charges were also brought against two assistants of judges, the secretary of court proceedings, the intermediate who was looking for clients, and two attorneys. By the way, some of these people also cooperated with the investigators further on, which helped the investigation a lot.
In their turn, their punishment was much milder. These are two attorneys – Tetiana Berezhna and Serhii Hafiichuk. They started cooperating with the investigators, who used their information to determine other participants and define the roles of judges and their assistants in the scheme much more precisely.
Tetiana Berezhna, the attorney, transferred UAH 500 thousand for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and got one one-year probation period. Serhii Hafiichuk transferred UAH 90 thousand for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and received one probational year, too.
“These are people who made a deal and provided exposing evidence of the activity of the scheme organizers. As for organizers, we don’t make deals with them,” Pidhrushnyi highlights.
According to the current legislation, the investigation in this case can last only until July 28, 2025.
Indestructible scheme
Of course, the NABU’s operation in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi was spectacular, but the scheme itself hasn’t vanished because there is still a demand for it.
Last year, a total of 2,276 rulings were declared in Ukraine about determining the child’s place of residence in favour of a father. This is only 16% lower than in the peak 2023 in 2023, Ukrainian courts declared a total of 2,708 such rulings , but it is still almost eight times higher than in a relatively pre-war 2021 there were only 289 ruling in the entire country .
Almost 45% of all the rulings belong to only four courts, and the evident leader was found in the Pershotravnevyi district court of the city of Chernivtsi, where 422 rulings on determining the child’s place of residence were declared in favour of fathers. Just one judge of this court, Ihor Ishchenko, declared 208 such doubtful rulings.
A typical example is Ishchenko’s decision in favour of Stepan Khytryi, a dentist from Chernivtsi, who has officially divorced his wife and allegedly brings up his elder daughter on his own. At the same time, Stepan and Natalia Khytryi demonstrate a family-oriented approach to treatment and family values on the website of their clinic. And the fact that, according to the court documents, they raise their children separately does not prevent Natalia from having a rest in Turkey together with her elder daughter, although in court, she officially stated that she wasn’t involved in her upbringing.
Author Nataliya Onysko, editor Oleh Onysko, data analysis Nazarіі Tuziak, translation Nelya Plakhota, cover Marta Kharkovets