On March 2, the Izmailovsky Court of Moscow will not be able to start considering the criminal case of the ex-governor of the Penza Region, Ivan Belozertsev, who is accused of taking bribes in the amount of more than 31 million rubles. “The hearing scheduled in the building of the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center will be postponed, since on February 27 my client Boris Shpigel was hospitalized at the Chazov Cardiology Center for an examination,” his lawyer Anton Kozhemyakin told Business FM.
He noted that this was not an emergency hospitalization, but a planned examination, for which Spiegel was going to be sent long ago from the Matrosskaya Tishina hospital. During it, it is planned to perform a whole range of examinations related to his cardiovascular diseases.
It was expected that on March 2, at an offsite hearing in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center, the prosecutor would announce the indictment, and the defendants would express their attitude towards it.
It was decided to listen to the case in the isolation ward at the request of Spiegel’s lawyers, whose transportation the doctors do not allow. Earlier, the defense has repeatedly stated about serious health problems of the accused, who, according to lawyers, spent almost all the time after his arrest in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison hospital due to problems with the heart, blood vessels, breathing and others.
Together with Belozertsev and Spiegel, the wife of the head of Biotek, Yevgenia Shpigel, director of OAO Pharmacia (this company manages the pharmacy business of the Biotek group of companies), Anton Koloskov, driver of the governor Gennady Markov, and deputy head of the Penza Region Office at the Cabinet, a relative Belozertseva Fyodor Fedotov. All of them are arrested.
Depending on their role, they were charged with giving a bribe, receiving a bribe and mediation in bribery, as well as illegally acquiring and storing firearms and ammunition (part 5 of article 291, part 6 of article 290, art. 291.1 and part 1 article 222 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
The case concerns Belozertsev receiving more than 31 million rubles in bribes from Boris Shpigel through intermediaries for helping his firms to conclude pharmaceutical contracts that are beneficial to them. The defendants deny their guilt.
