Supreme Court rules deputy NBU head reprimand illegal

The Supreme Court published a ruling on Feb. 2 stating that the National Bank's 2020 council decision to reprimand the bank's deputy head, Kateryna Rozhkova, and accuse her of untrustworthiness was illegal.

Rozhkova was reprimanded along with then NBU deputy governor Dmytro Sologub after the two expressed concerns about the NBU's independence in comments to the media.

In September 2020, the Kyiv Post ran a story about resignations at the National Bank and the shaky independence of the institution. Rozhkova and Sologub were among the officials who spoke to the publication.

Following it, both deputy governors were reprimanded by the bank's council. Their comments have allegedly violated the NBU regulations and the employee code of ethics.

Rozhkova and Sologub sued the council to retract the reprimand.

The Kyiv Post, where the story ran in 2020, is a Ukrainian English-language publication. On Nov. 8, 2021, the owner of the newspaper, construction tycoon Adnan Kivan, fired the whole staff amid a dispute over editorial independence. The editorial team went on to start their own publication, The Kyiv Independent. The owner relaunched the Kyiv Post with a smaller staff of expat journalists.