The Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors has decided to dismiss Oleh Opanasyuk from the Pustomyty District Prosecutor's Office of Lviv Oblast. The reason was his refusal to undergo a repeated medical examination to confirm the second group of disability, which he had had since 2013 based on the conclusions of the Shevchenkivsk MSEC in Lviv.
According to the disciplinary proceedings, the prosecutor received pension payments for years — first general, and later special prosecutorial. At the same time, when the need arose to confirm the diagnosis at a specialized institute in Dnipro, he categorically refused to travel.
Opanasyuk explained his position by his health and the impossibility of long-term travel. However, the KDKP established that during this period he traveled to Kyiv for certification without hindrance and twice personally drove a car while crossing the state border with Poland. These circumstances became key for assessing his arguments.
The commission's decision states that such behavior, especially in the context of martial law and increased public attention to issues of social payments and benefits, undermines the authority of the prosecutor's office. In view of this, the most severe disciplinary sanction was applied to the prosecutor - dismissal.
However, Opanasyuk's story is just one example of a systemic problem where the status of a person with a disability is used to obtain special pensions and other privileges. Despite public reports by the Prosecutor General about the dismissal of individual officials and the opening of criminal proceedings, the practice of early retirement and receiving significant payments continues to cause public resonance.
Previously, the story of former prosecutor Kazak , who at the age of 29 obtained a pension through the court and achieved monthly payments of over 150 thousand hryvnias, received wide publicity. The public also mentions cases of prosecutors who combine special pensions with their salaries and own expensive cars and real estate, some of which are not reflected in their declarations.
Lawyers emphasize that the key problem remains the mechanism for assigning special pensions and the practice of counting periods of study or work that are not actually related to the performance of prosecutorial functions as special seniority. Combined with decisions of individual courts, this creates opportunities for receiving payments that significantly exceed the average pensions in the country.
Demands are increasingly being voiced in society to review approaches to assigning special pensions and to strengthen control over the reliability of MSEC certificates in order to prevent the use of social status as a tool for enrichment.
