Ex-official with a “golden” pension: how he received 240 thousand UAH monthly and won 7 million in the Pension Fund

In Ukraine, a large number of people receiving special pensions have managed to increase their payments to impressive amounts – up to hundreds of thousands of hryvnias per month – through the courts. In particular, former MP Viktor Chumak has become one of the most prominent successful pensioners of recent times. Recently, the court increased his pension by almost 4.7 times, to 240.9 thousand hryvnias. Previously, as for many other special pensioners, his payments were reduced due to established restrictions.

According to Ukrainian law, the maximum pension amount cannot exceed 10 subsistence minimums, which currently amount to 23,610 hryvnias. The pension fund can pay larger amounts only based on court decisions – there have been more than 25 thousand such decisions. Among the four thousand cases considered, Chumak received one of the largest pensions. He won the case on October 29, receiving satisfaction from the Kyiv District Administrative Court regarding the cancellation of the restrictive coefficients applied to his payments.

Thus, Chumak’s pension will increase from 50,388 hryvnias to 240,950 hryvnias per month. Although this is not an absolute record, such amounts remain rare: usually, “privileged” pensioners receive about 90% of their previous salary, while the average Ukrainian gets about 30%.

The post of Chief Military Prosecutor, which Chumak held for less than five months, has now been abolished. However, it was the salary certificate from the Prosecutor General’s Office that became the basis for calculating his pension. It is known that last year the Prosecutor General’s average pre-tax salary was about 120 thousand hryvnias, which is half the amount Chumak should now receive.

As a result of the recalculation, Chumak is demanding back about seven million hryvnias from the Pension Fund of Ukraine.