Case description
On May 28, 2020, the HACC found Zoya Ponomar, ex-judge of the Court of Appeal of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, guilty of failing to submit electronic declarations for 2017-2018. The former judge was fined UAH 51,000, but the verdict against her was then overturned due to the scandalous decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which abolished criminal liability for false declaration or intentional failure to submit a declaration.
Ponomar explained that she did not submit a declaration on the NACP website due to the fact that she deliberately did not want to obtain an electronic signature. She “does not want her personal data to be used by anyone, as cybercrime is very common.” Instead, the accused sent scans of paper declarations with the usual signature and cover letters to the NACP. The court did not take them into consideration because the signatures were scanned and therefore not original.
Interestingly, until 2013, the judge regularly obtained the electronic signature and signed documents with it; back then, she had no problem doing it.
The crime was qualified under Article 366-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Ponomar was fined UAH 51,000 and deprived of the right to hold judicial office for two years.
Later, the ex-judge filed an appeal, in which she asked to overturn the verdict and the preliminary court ruling against herself, as well as to close the criminal proceedings. The HACC Appeals Chamber upheld the verdict, but overturned another HACC ruling in the episode on failure to file declarations for 2015-2016 because the statute of limitations for that case had expired.
There are also two separate opinions in the case, in particular, the opinion of the HACC judge Vitalii Kryklyvyi, which he motivates by the fact that the accused did not have the intention to evade submitting the declaration, and therefore there were no elements of the crime in her actions. There is also a separate opinion of the judge of the HACC Appeals Chamber Danyila Chornenka; according to her, there are no elements of the crime, so the proceedings are subject to closure.
However, on October 27, 2020, Article 366-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine was declared unconstitutional, so subsequently, the accused appealed to the HACC with a request to review the decision and filed a cassation appeal against her sentence and the appellate decision.
Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled to overturn the verdict and the decision of the HACC Appeals Chamber regarding Ponomar, as well as to close the criminal proceedings.
