A Judge With a Russian Passport and 26 Million Hryvnias: Ukraine's Former Top Commercial Court Head Faces Second Suspicion — This Time for Money Laundering

The numbers deserve a plain-language translation. Twenty-six million hryvnias buys a house with a land plot, two apartment suites and four plots of land. That is the portfolio investigators say Lvov acquired in 2021–2022.

The problem is not the portfolio itself. The problem is whose name is on the paperwork: the mother of his subordinate, a court assistant.

A woman employed as a judge's assistant suddenly becomes the owner of real estate worth 26 million hryvnias. Investigators believe the real owner was the judge, and that the proxy registration constitutes money laundering. Lvov and the assistant's mother are charged under Part 3 of Article 209 of Ukraine's Criminal Code — laundering property obtained through crime.

Three people are named as suspects: Lvov, his former subordinate, and her mother.

Now for the more revealing part — who this man is.

Bohdan Lvov headed the Cassation Commercial Court within the Supreme Court from December 2017. This is the court that issues final rulings in Ukraine's biggest commercial disputes — cases involving billions of hryvnias, state property and the fate of major companies. A position where a judge's own assets would reasonably be expected to be transparent.

In September 2022, journalists from the Schemes investigative project (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) published a finding: Lvov, they reported, had obtained Russian citizenship back in 1999 — while already serving as a judge in Ukraine — and renewed his Russian passport in 2012 after turning 45.

The response was predictable. Lvov called the investigation a fake and said he was turning to law enforcement.

Then came the part that usually does not happen. Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) confirmed the Russian passport existed — specifically, that Lvov received a new document in 2012 to replace one that had expired in 1999. The service later confirmed his Russian citizenship in an appellate filing as well. According to the Slovo i Dilo outlet, citing Russian tax registries, Lvov even holds a Russian taxpayer number.

In other words: a fake, confirmed by the security service. An unusual genre.

On October 5, 2022, then-Chief Justice Vsevolod Knyazev removed Lvov from the Supreme Court. That is where the story should have ended. Instead, the system demonstrated its real speed.

In January 2024, a Kyiv district administrative court ruled the dismissal unlawful and struck it down. A judge with an SBU-confirmed Russian passport was litigating for the right to return to Ukraine's Supreme Court. An appellate administrative court ultimately refused to reinstate him — but getting there took years.

And now a new chapter. In June 2025, Lvov was already named a suspect in aiding the seizure of part of a state-owned oil products pipeline. On September 23, 2026 — the second suspicion, this time for laundering.

Lvov denies the allegations and says false information is being spread about him. That is his right, and it matters: a suspicion is not a verdict, and no court has convicted him of anything.

But even without a verdict, there are questions the system has yet to answer. How did a person with Russian citizenship, obtained in 1999, remain a senior judge for decades? How did he pass integrity vetting in the Supreme Court competition at all? And why did it take journalists, the SBU, administrative courts and four years of litigation to effectively remove him?

For Ukraine, this is not an abstract legal story. Judicial cleanup is one of the key benchmarks by which Brussels assesses Kyiv's path to EU membership. Every case like this is a ready-made exhibit for European officials: here is what a judge the system could not fire on its own looks like.

What happens next depends on the court selecting a pre-trial restriction measure — and on whether the case ever reaches an indictment. The 2025 suspicion never turned into a verdict.

Twenty-six million hryvnias in the name of an assistant's mother. A passport of the aggressor state that officials first called a fake. And a judicial seat fought over until 2024. If that is not a portrait of Ukraine's judicial reform problem — what is?