Poltava prosecutor Pleskach wins court case for special pension: received over 1 million for less than a year - media
Oleh Pleskach (42), a former first deputy prosecutor and current employee of the Poltava regional prosecutor's office, succeeded in court in obtaining a special pension for his length of service. The amount of the pension is 90% of his salary.
This was reported by Poltavshchyna, Censor.NET informs.
According to the income tax return for 2024, Pleskach and his wife have more than 20 hectares of land for two people. Currently, a hectare of land costs about $4 thousand.
He received UAH 1 million 659 thousand in salary (and an in-kind gift worth UAH 4.8 million), as well as UAH 1 million 23 thousand in pension.
This is a special prosecutor's pension for long service, which Pleskach began receiving in the spring of 2024. The relevant decision was made by the Poltava District Administrative Court on 4 September 2023.
At that time, he sued the Main Department of the Pension Fund of Ukraine in Poltava region.
Thus, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit to oblige the regional head office of the Pension Fund of Ukraine to grant him a long-service pension in the amount of 90% of his accrued monthly salary, taking into account all its components, without applying a limit on the maximum amount of the pension.
Pleskach claimed that the Pension Fund had unlawfully failed to consider his application for a pension and had not decided on the granting of a long-service pension.
"On 29 July 2023, the court received a response to the claim, according to which the Pension Fund in Poltava Oblast considers the plaintiff's claims to be groundless and unfounded. The defendant noted that the plaintiff's application had been considered on the principle of extraterritoriality by the Main Department of Pension Funds of Ukraine in Cherkasy Oblast, which, by a decision of 14 July 2023, refused to grant him a long-service pension," the journalists write.
Having examined the case file, the court found that Pleskach had been working continuously in the prosecution service since 14 April 2004. His total pensionable service as of the date of his application for a pension was 23 years 5 months and 25 days, his length of service was 21 years 3 months and 5 days, and his work experience as a prosecutor was 17 years 5 months and 10 days.
Therefore, the court concluded that there were grounds to declare the inaction of the Pension Fund's department in not considering the plaintiff's application unlawful.
Judge Serhii Boiko ruled that the Pension Fund's inaction was unlawful and ordered it to grant Oleh Pleskach a long-service pension of 90% of his accrued monthly salary with all components, the publication notes.
In March 2024, the Second Administrative Court of Appeal refused the Poltava Oblast Pension Fund to open proceedings. Around that time, Oleh Pleskach began receiving his pension.
How the system works
A prosecutor applies to the Pension Fund to be granted a pension under a special law. Such applications are often rejected because the prosecutor does not have the required length of service.
The prosecutor then files a lawsuit and demands that his length of service be recalculated and that a pension exceeding 60% of his salary be calculated. In his arguments, the plaintiff refers not to the current Law ‘On the Prosecutor's Office’ of 2015, but to the law of 1991, which has lost its force. In addition, not to its latest version, but to the one that has been in force since 2001. Judges of the Poltava Regional Administrative Court pointed to the same norms, the journalists write in the article.
The wording of the old Law "On the Prosecutor's Office" defined completely different rules for the retirement of prosecutors. Thus, prosecutors were eligible for retirement after 20 years of service, of which only ten years were spent in the prosecutor's office.
"The amount of a prosecutor's pension payment was set at 80% of his or her salary. For each year of work in this position over ten years, the pension was increased by 2% of the salary, but not more than 90% of the salary. In other words, after working in the prosecution service for 15 years or more, a person could claim a pension of 90% of his or her salary under the old law.
An important point is that this version of the invalid law did not set any restrictions on the maximum allowable pension amount," the authors explained.
