UAH 156,000 pension for a former Mykolaiv region prosecutor. Pension Fund of Ukraine officials failed to appeal the court ruling

Former prosecutor of the Mykolaiv region, Dmytro Kazak, obtained via court a pension of 156,7 thousand UAH per month, and the Pension Fund failed to appeal the decision on time, missing the appeal deadline by 51 days.

The situation was reported by journalists of the publication «Obozrevatel», indicating that, according to certificates provided by the prosecutor’s office, Kazak allegedly had a monthly income that exceeded his superior’s pay, while the actual declaration data do not confirm this.

According to the reports, in 2022 the former head of the regional prosecutor’s office achieved a recalculation of his pension through the courts not under the current rules (which provide 60% of the salary), but under a now-repealed rule — in the amount of 80% of earnings.

The key evidence were certificates from the Mykolaiv regional prosecutor’s office: they showed that over the last five years Kazak’s average monthly salary allegedly amounted to 195,8 thousand UAH. On the basis of these documents the court set the payment at 80% of that amount.

In the article journalists emphasize that such figures contradict declared incomes and even exceed the salaries of the leadership of the prosecutor’s offices. They provided the following calculations:

So, the full salary, according to the certificates, is 195 869,3 UAH. And this is false information. Usually, to calculate a prosecutor’s payment they take the last five years of service. The point is that Kazak filed declarations for all those five years and never had a monthly income of that size. Moreover, even the Prosecutor General receives a lower salary.

Thus, in the five years before the pension was granted, Kazak’s average monthly income was at the level of 52 470 UAH. Therefore his pension (80% of salary) should have amounted to 41 976 UAH, not 156 692 UAH. How the prosecutor’s office calculated his income, and why no one raised questions about such certificates, is a mystery, the article says.

The behavior of the Pension Fund also raises questions: after receiving a copy of the court decision the agency filed an appeal late — instead of the prescribed 30 days the documents were submitted after 51 days. Moreover, procedural mistakes were made during the submission: the receipt for payment of the court fee was not added and the deadlines to correct deficiencies were not met.

As a result, the appellate court refused to open proceedings without moving to consider the case on the merits. Further attempts by the fund to fix the situation produced no result — the deadlines had already been missed, so the initial decision was left in force.

The legal failure of the state body effectively secured the former high-ranking official’s right to receive the full increased pension. According to media reports, Dmytro Kazak now lives outside Ukraine with his family, and the state continues to transfer the assigned funds to him. For comparison, the average pension in the country is about 6,5 thousand UAH — tens of times less than the payments set by the court for the former prosecutor.

Earlier we wrote:

• Over 35 thousand Ukrainians have very high pensions: who receives the most
• A 156-thousand pension at 33 years old: how the system allowed a prosecutor to bypass the limit
• How the Mykolaiv ex-prosecutor fled abroad and forced the state to pay him about 2 million in pension per year
• The former head of the Mykolaiv prosecutor’s office registered a disability and sued for an exorbitant pension
• Ukrainians receive pensions over 50 thousand hryvnias. The largest pension — over 390 thousand hryvnias