BAJ Board concludes review and issues decision regarding deputy chair Barys Haretski

On Decem­ber 23, the BAJ Board dis­cussed the con­clu­sion of an exter­nal expert and made a deci­sion in con­nec­tion with alle­ga­tions against BAJ Deputy Chair Barys Haret­s­ki regard­ing pos­si­ble harass­ment.

On August 14, 2025, the BAJ Board began review­ing infor­ma­tion about pos­si­ble instances of harass­ment by BAJ Deputy Chair Barys Haret­s­ki. The Board was noti­fied of the alle­ga­tions by Barys Haret­s­ki him­self.

Giv­en the nature and seri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion, the Board decid­ed to ini­ti­ate an inter­nal review. For the dura­tion of this review, Barys Haret­s­ki was sus­pend­ed from per­form­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive and man­age­r­i­al func­tions with­in BAJ.

On August 20, 2025, pur­suant to a deci­sion of the Board, BAJ pub­lished on its web­site the Reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the work of autho­rized per­sons for review­ing com­plaints con­tain­ing alle­ga­tions of harass­ment. The Reg­u­la­tions estab­lished the pro­ce­dure for receiv­ing and ver­i­fy­ing com­plaints, as well as for prepar­ing sum­ma­ry mate­ri­als.

On Octo­ber 17, 2025, the BAJ Board reviewed the con­sol­i­dat­ed report pro­duced by the autho­rized per­sons based on the results of infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing.

The autho­rized per­sons received one com­plaint from an indi­vid­ual who con­sid­ers her­self a vic­tim. She declined fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed proved insuf­fi­cient to make a deter­mi­na­tion qual­i­fy­ing Barys Haretski’s actions as harass­ment.

In light of the need for a com­pre­hen­sive and prin­ci­pled assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion, the Board decid­ed to extend the review until Decem­ber 1, 2025, and to involve an exter­nal expert to assess the infor­ma­tion. Until the con­clu­sion of the review, Barys Haret­s­ki remained sus­pend­ed from per­form­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive and man­age­r­i­al func­tions as Deputy Chair of BAJ.

On Decem­ber 17, 2025, the BAJ Board received the opin­ion of an exter­nal expert in the field of gen­der and harass­ment who had been engaged for this review.

Based on the results of the review and tak­ing into account the expert opin­ion, the BAJ Board decid­ed to:

• Acknowl­edge that the actions of BAJ Deputy Chair Barys Haret­s­ki could have been per­ceived as ambigu­ous and inter­pret­ed as harass­ment.
• Issue a warn­ing to Mr. Haret­s­ki regard­ing the inad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of such behav­ior in the future.
• Apply dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures to Haret­s­ki in the form of sus­pen­sion from per­form­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive and man­age­r­i­al func­tions for a peri­od of 12 months. This peri­od includes the sus­pen­sion of Barys Haret­s­ki from the time the Board decid­ed to ini­ti­ate the inves­ti­ga­tion against him (from August 14, 2025). The Board shall con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing Barys Haretski’s pro­fes­sion­al relations/behavior until the end of this peri­od (August 13, 2026).
• Intro­duce addi­tion­al restric­tive mea­sures with respect to Barys Haret­s­ki in order to pre­vent sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. Require him to con­duct busi­ness con­tacts only dur­ing work­ing hours or in the work­place, or using approved busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels.
• Require Barys Haret­s­ki to under­go train­ing on pre­vent­ing harass­ment and vio­la­tions of per­son­al bound­aries in pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.
• Con­tin­ue devel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive gen­der pol­i­cy for BAJ, as well as a plan for its imple­men­ta­tion, exe­cu­tion, mon­i­tor­ing, and eval­u­a­tion. With­in the frame­work of the gen­der pol­i­cy, adopt Reg­u­la­tions for review­ing and respond­ing to harass­ment com­plaints.
• Take note of the check­list devel­oped by the expert for respond­ing to cas­es of harass­ment.
• Until the Reg­u­la­tions are approved, extend the func­tions of the per­sons autho­rized by the Board to col­lect infor­ma­tion about pos­si­ble harass­ment in pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties by BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Infor­ma­tion is col­lect­ed in free form via the email address 2025_zbor-infarmacji@proton.me, access to which is lim­it­ed to autho­rized per­sons only (until oth­er tools are announced after the Reg­u­la­tions are approved).
• Engage inde­pen­dent experts to assess the infor­ma­tion received.
• Ensure a bal­ance between trans­paren­cy in efforts to pre­vent harass­ment and the pro­tec­tion of per­son­al data.
• Orga­nize train­ing for all BAJ staff aimed at pre­vent­ing harass­ment, and con­duct such train­ing annu­al­ly.
• Giv­en the high pub­lic sig­nif­i­cance of the issue of gen­der-based vio­lence and work­place harass­ment, con­tin­ue to reg­u­lar­ly inform civ­il soci­ety and the media sec­tor about the imple­men­ta­tion of BAJ’s gen­der pol­i­cy.