Draft Law 13165-2: Declarations without integrity, or a life jacket for dishonest judges

Judges with questionable track records may receive several gifts from the Verkhovna Rada at once. On June 9, lawmakers will vote on the Draft Law No. 13165–2, which amends the procedure for verifying judges' integrity.

This version of the law would effectively leave judges with a convenient space for excuses, while society receives no meaningful tool for oversight. The verification procedure would no longer include questions about whether a judge's assets match their income, nor questions about violations of the judicial oath or interference in the administration of justice. Liability would arise only for intentional lying — which is nearly impossible to prove. The content of the draft law is hence directly opposite to its title, which talks about "improvement."

In addition, the draft law adjusts the baseline for calculating judicial remuneration, which could increase pay by up to 50%. For judges in local courts, this matters — their pay has effectively been frozen since 2021. But fair compensation should come alongside effective accountability. Instead, the draft law proposes raising salaries while simultaneously stripping away accountability.

Against the backdrop of new developments in the largest corruption scandal in Ukrainian judicial history — involving former Supreme Court Chief Justice Vsevolod Kniazev — this increasingly 'lightness of being' for dishonest judges looks particularly cynical.

How the current procedure works — and why it's ineffective

Each year, judges must submit a document to the High Qualifications Commission of Judges (HQCJ) called an integrity declaration. There, they confirm basic things: that their lifestyle matches their income; that they have not made decisions while in a conflict of interest; that they have taken no steps to acquire Russian citizenship. The HQCJ may then verify these statements, and if discrepancies are found, the High Council of Justice (HCJ) can impose disciplinary liability.

On paper, this looks like a strong tool. In practice, it barely works:

• The HQCJ cannot review declarations on its own initiative — it requires a complaint or report. But there's a full circle: integrity declarations are hidden from public access, even though the law explicitly states they should be open. Without complaints, no one reviews them.
• The law on integrity declarations provides for liability only for intentional submission of false information. But this wording is a gift to judges. All it takes is to say "I misunderstood the question," "I forgot," "I didn't check," "I made a mistake" — and proving intent becomes virtually impossible.
• Even when lying in declarations was established, punishments were symbolic — a warning or reprimand, effectively the loss of a bonus for one month.

Even in seemingly airtight cases, accountability never followed. Take the case of Supreme Court Grand Chamber Judge Olha Stupak. The Public Integrity Council found that the judge had lied in her 2016 integrity declaration. She claimed that a 380 sq. m. house outside Kyiv belonged to her mother-in-law, and that she herself did not use it — she only visited because her mother-in-law was grieving her husband's death. Yet NABU investigation showed the house was purchased with the judge's husband's funds, and mobile operator data indicated the judge had been using it since 2015. Meanwhile, the mother-in-law never left the Zhytomyr region and refused to testify to NABU.

Following a complaint from the Automaidan civic organization, the HQCJ established that the declarations contained lies and referred the matter to the HCJ to open a disciplinary case. Yet Stupak was never held accountable. The HCJ said there was no intent to deceive — because in subsequent declarations, the judge had already listed the house. Never mind that this happened only after the concealment was exposed.

This is precisely why Ukraine's reform commitments include a requirement to improve the integrity declaration verification mechanism and add liability not just for intentional deception, but also for gross negligence in completing declarations.

New rules, old loopholes

We identified at least a dozen risks in the draft law that would turn integrity declarations into a routine form-filling exercise with no real consequences.

The key issue: the new version of the 13165–2 does not solve the main problem — liability for intentional lying.

False information can be explained away by saying one misunderstood the question or made a mistake. Indeed, not every error should end in dismissal. But gross negligence regarding assets, conflicts of interest, ties to Russia, or interference in the administration of justice should carry consequences.

The timeframe for verification is narrowed. Currently, the first declaration submitted covers a judge's entire career — which is logical. But the draft law limits the reporting period for most questions to just one year. This is critical for issues that don't lose relevance over time — such as trips to Russia or temporarily occupied territories, or steps taken to acquire foreign citizenship. If a judge submits their first declaration in 2026 but traveled to Russia in 2024, why should that fact fall outside the scope of review? The risk doesn't disappear just because a year has passed.

The draft law sets a six-month verification deadline. If that time lapses, information about false declarations is automatically deemed "unconfirmed." This creates a corruption risk. If a case lands with a HQCJ member who is in no rush — or who "sympathises" with the judge — the review can simply be delayed. Six months pass, and the judge is automatically considered to have integrity.

More ways how the MPs plan to help judges

• Judges would no longer need to confirm that their lifestyle matches their official income. This is a fundamental question for any integrity check. Remoingl this asset-related block is explained by the assumption that the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) handles it. But the NACP lacks the capacity to promptly and thoroughly verify the asset declarations of all judges.

Such verification is also highly formalistic. A judge can explain, for example, that they lived on the minimum subsistence level and somehow saved up for a sports car — and the NACP has nothing to counter that. And even when violations are found, judges routinely escape accountability.

A telling example: Supreme Court Judge Iryna Hryhorieva, a suspect in the Kniazev case. During a NABU search, investigators found 50,000 marked US dollars in her possession. The NACP conducted a full review of her 2023 asset declaration, in which Hryhorieva listed these funds as a loan from Kniazev. There was no loan agreement, and Kniazev did not confirm the loan (and later stated the money was a bribe). The NACP did not believe the loan story and found signs of a criminal offense — false declaration. The judge challenged the finding in court. The case was reviewed for over a year. Ultimately, the court found the NACP's conclusion insufficiently substantiated — allegedly based on assumptions.

The NACP has repeatedly clarified that disciplinary procedures are autonomous and do not require waiting for its conclusions. Removing the asset-related questions for judges would reduce the detection of asset violations to statistical noise.

• Verification of corruption offenses would only be possible after a court verdict. This raises an obvious question: what exactly is there left to verify?

If a court ruling already exists, the offense is established. The integrity declaration mechanism was meant to identify risks early — not to duplicate a court judgment after everything has already become obvious.

In practice, this provision effectively bans the use of materials from criminal proceedings in the verification process — precisely what dishonest judges caught red-handed have long sought, including those dismissed by the HCJ on the basis of video evidence of bribe-taking.

• Questions related to violations of the judicial oath, interference in the administration of justice, lustration bans, and rulings against Maidan protesters are removed.

These episodes in a judge's career are direct red flags for dishonesty. If a judge concealed involvement in interfering with justice or in Maidan-era cases, this should be reviewed. If a judicial candidate failed to disclose such circumstances during a competition, it should affect their evaluation. Instead, the draft law simply removes a significant portion of these facts from the scope of review.

• Verification of family ties also disappears. The new mechanism provides no clear answer on who will verify statements about family connections — or how. Yet this is critical. Family ties within courts, law enforcement, the bar, and government bodies can create conflicts of interest and nepotism.
• The draft law also prohibits reviewing information from anonymous complainants. This may appear to be an attempt to filter out baseless complaints. But in our view, the HQCJ itself should decide which information to consider and which to dismiss as unfounded. Consider a case where someone sends a detailed video of a judge stumbling out of an undeclared vehicle — but the local complainant is afraid to come forward openly against a judge. Under this draft law, the HQCJ cannot even look at an anonymous submission.

The possible cost of imitation — €700mln from the EU and the trust of Ukrainians

The integrity and family connections declaration mechanism needs improvement. It is weak, slow, and often produces no real results. But draft law 13165–2, in the committee's version, does not fix these problems. It makes them worse.

Three years ago, following Kniazev's detention, the European Commission's reports noted that Ukraine must address corruption risks, including within the Supreme Court. How? The Venice Commission provided the answer: through integrity checks of all Supreme Court judges.

Under the recommendations of European partners and the Venice Commission, Ukraine had to strengthen the verification procedure, with lying — including through gross negligence in completing declarations — becoming grounds for disciplinary liability, including dismissal in serious cases. They also recommended involving independent international experts in reviewing Supreme Court judges, given the full scope of corruption risks identified.

If the draft law is adopted in its current form, the cost of this imitation could be very concrete: nearly €700 million from the Ukraine Facility programme would be at risk. That is roughly half the annual budget allocated to healthcare.

But there is another cost — one that is harder to measure. Every law that calls itself a reform without being one erodes the trust of Ukrainians in the institutions meant to protect them. And it erodes the trust of partners who provide funding not simply out of goodwill, but in exchange for specific obligations.

After the Kniazev case, society waited for an answer: who is next? This draft law gives a different answer — no one, ever. Because a system that cannot review a judge despite video evidence due to the complainant's anonymity, or that "forgets" about trips to Russia after a year, is not a verification system. It is a protection system for the dishonest.

Parliament can still fix this draft law. But that requires the political will to acknowledge a simple truth: a reform is not a law that is passed. It is a law that actually delivers results.

DEJURE Foundation calls on the Verkhovna Rada not to vote for draft law No. 13165–2 in its current form and to immediately correct it before the second reading.