A major scandal has erupted in Ternopil surrounding the family of Petro Babiuk, Deputy Chairman of the Ternopil Regional Administrative Court. Shortly after searches conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), his mother, Maria Babiuk—director of the Galician Professional College and a former city council member—transferred valuable real estate to him. In total, during the spring and summer of 2026, the judge received property and cash worth over 10 million UAH from his parents.
The SBI investigation centers on an alleged scheme at the college involving the fictitious employment of roughly 15 military-age men as assistant lecturers. According to investigators, between 2023 and 2025, this setup provided draft deferments while the accrued salaries were allegedly pocketed by college leadership. Official records show Maria Babiuk earned around 1.17 million UAH in 2025, while the judge’s father, Mykhailo Babiuk, is a retiree with a background in accounting, insurance, and agriculture.
SBI searches took place approximately three weeks before the initial property transfers began. On March 31, 2026, Maria Babiuk gifted her son a 200 sq. m apartment in Ternopil and a garage, valued at roughly 8.7 million UAH. On April 4, she transferred a share in a Truskavets apartment valued at 1.4 million UAH. Later, on July 30, his father gifted him 400,000 UAH in cash, which the judge used the following day to purchase a 1,509 sq. m land plot in Khmelnytskyi Oblast. A similar transfer occurred in 2010, prior to his judicial appointment, when his mother gifted him a 388 sq. m estate in Baikivtsi.
Maria Babiuk declined to detail the investigation, citing secrecy of the inquiry and the presumption of innocence, maintaining that the gifts were a private legal right under the Civil Code. Judge Petro Babiuk—who has served since 2010 and previously ruled on high-profile cases, such as denying the reinstatement of convicted former regional council head Mykhailo Golovko—attributed the urgency of the transfers to his mother’s severe illness and his parents’ advancing age.
«The property had been family-owned for nearly 20 years before my appointment, and its 2026 valuation is tens of times higher than the original cost. My mother is not a suspect, and all changes to my declaration were filed on time,» Petro Babiuk stated.
This is not the first time the family’s finances have faced public scrutiny. In 2019, the Public Integrity Council highlighted discrepancies in his father’s disclosures, noting over 1 million UAH in expenses against 122,300 UAH in official income over five years. At the time, the judge explained the funds through family assistance and asset sales, leading the High Qualification Commission of Judges to clear him.
Additionally, in 2018, Maria Babiuk faced charges over the alleged use of forged PhD diplomas to collect salary bonuses over an 18-year period; however, the case was closed in November 2020 due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.