The High Council of Justice has refused to revoke the honorable retirement of Supreme Court Justice Valentyna Simonenko. Nearly a year ago, investigative journalists revealed that she held a Russian passport, but the HCJ did not find sufficient evidence to rescind her retirement benefits, which include lifetime support. Simonenko receives nearly 200,000 hryvnias ($4,866) monthly from the state budget, according to Slidstvo.info.

On July 25, 2024, the High Council of Justice considered terminating the resignation of Valentyna Simonenko, who worked as a judge in the Supreme Court. Kateryna Butko, head of the All-Ukrainian Automaidan Association, asked to terminate her resignation because Valentyna Simonenko was found to have foreign citizenship.

Judge Valentyna Simonenko / photo by the Supreme Court

According to the investigative journalists from the Skhemy project, Judge Valentyna Simonenko received a Russian passport in 2003: «…the reason for acquiring Russian citizenship is Article 18, paragraph a) of the Federal Law ‘On Citizenship of the Russian Federation’, which states that it can be obtained by a person whose spouse or relative or parents have Russian citizenship».

When Simonenko obtained Russian citizenship, she was already serving as a judge in the Sevastopol Court of Appeal in now-occupied Crimea. Currently, her passport is listed as invalid «due to the expiration of its validity».

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According to journalists, Valentina Smirnova was issued a Russian passport by an internal affairs agency in the village of Veshenskaya, Rostov Oblast. The databases of leaked Russian residents indicate that as of 2015 and 2017, Simonenko was registered in this region. Her Russian passport data is available in these databases: «This may indicate that Valentyna Simonenko did not renounce her Russian citizenship, because according to the Russian Presidential Decree of November 14, 2002, this requires submitting a document on deregistration at the place of residence. The leak from Russian databases reveals that the judge probably did not do this».

Judges who are found to have any foreign citizenship can be dismissed, and in the case of Valentyna Simonenko, her resignation, which provides for a lifetime allowance (Simonenko receives about 200,000 hryvnias ($4,866) per month), can be revoked, but the HCJ decided not to do so because it does not have sufficient evidence of the judge’s Russian citizenship.

The HCJ came to this conclusion because the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) stated that they had no information about whether or not Simonenko had a Russian passport. The High Council of Justice was also informed by the relevant authorities that Simonenko did not cross the border of Ukraine in the direction of the aggressor state, as well as the demarcation line with the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine from November 8, 2017 to January 22, 2024.

The retired judge herself told the HCJ that she had not applied to any Russian authorities for a tax identification number and denied receiving it. At the same time, Simonenko notes that in 2015 she inherited a land plot in Sevastopol with her sister and received a Russian tax number when the judge’s sister inherited it.

«(Simonenko – ed.) also drew attention to the fact that the listed document of the person to whom the said Russian tax identification number was assigned is a passport of a citizen of Ukraine issued to her in 2015, which, accordingly, refutes the circumstances of her acquisition of Russian citizenship», — the HCJ decision says.

The case of obtaining a Russian tax number was reviewed by the High Council of Justice in 2018. At that time, the HCJ did not initiate disciplinary proceedings against Simonenko due to the lack of evidence of misconduct.

In the HCJ’s practice, there are cases when it had enough evidence to revoke the resignation of judges with Russian citizenship following appeals from the SBU and Automaidan activists. Since the beginning of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, there have been five relevant decisions of this body. These are former judges Tamara Mishchenko, Nataliya Bulavina, Natalia Kupavska, Valeriya Bukhanko and Tetiana Shypovalova.

Earlier, journalists found a Russian passport in the possession of Bohdan Lvov, the head of the Economic Court of Cassation within the Supreme Court. Following the scandal, he was dismissed and attempted to reinstate himself through the court, but the former judge failed to win his appeal. Lvov is now trying to challenge the court’s decision in the cassation court, but this is his second attempt, as his previous complaint was returned due to incorrect filing.

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