Case description
On March 1, 2023, the HACC found ex-judge Nataliia Ovcharenko and doctor Nataliia Antonova guilty. The ex-judge received bribes from the defendants and then tried to bribe Kholodnytskyi, the former head of the SAPO, to close the case. Antonova forged medical certificates for her. Ovcharenko was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and the doctor was exempted from punishment.
Nataliia Ovcharenko served as a judge of the Kirovskyi District Court of Dnipro. In the summer of 2016, she and her colleague Oleh Khodasevych demanded USD 30,000 in bribes from the defendants for influencing prosecutors to reduce the charges and obtain a favorable court decision. Within a few months, Ovcharenko managed to receive USD 16,000, and in April 2017, she was detained by law enforcement officers. Khodasevych died in 2018, so the case against him was later closed.
Moreover, in September 2016, Ovcharenko appealed to Dnipro doctor Nataliia Antonova with a request to forge a sick leave certificate for her. The judge wanted to prevent the Verkhovna Rada from dismissing her for violating her oath. Later, she repeated the same thing in January–February 2017 to avoid participating in the automated distribution of cases she did not want to consider. Antonova agreed to “help” and, accordingly, became a defendant in the case.
The court classified Ovcharenko's actions under Article 368, part 4; Article 369-2, part 3; Article 354, part 1; Article 27, part 4; Article 358, part 3; Article 358, part 4 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, and Antonova was charged under Article 358, part 3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The doctor avoided her punishment due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, and the former judge was imprisoned for 10 years with confiscation of property and a ban on holding certain positions for 3 years.
During the trial, Ovcharenko even went to a psychiatric hospital and claimed that she was not feeling well. After the verdict, she went missing, and the appellate court put her on the wanted list.
Ovcharenko was also involved in another high-profile case. In September 2017, Hennadii Pidbereznyi, the head of the Kirovskyi District Court, together with Ovcharenko, came with a USD 50,000 bribe directly to the office of Nazar Kholodnytskyi, then-head of the SAPO. According to the latter, they offered him USD 300,000 for closing the criminal case against Ovcharenko and Khodasevych. We are talking about the same episode when they extorted money from the convicts. The PGO and the SSU detained two judges immediately.
