Oleg Mitvol went to jail on suspicion of embezzling 900 million rubles on the Krasnoyarsk metro project. He remained under arrest even after he made a deal with the investigation last summer. And already in August, the first news about the deterioration of his health appeared.
In early February, it became known that Mitvol was in the hospital. According to the businessman’s assistant Inga Shlenskaya, doctors discovered bilateral pneumonia in Mitvol and 50 percent lung damage. Such a serious progression of the disease, apparently, could have been avoided. For 20 (!) days, Oleg Mitvol complained to the SIZO staff about his poor health. And it was not about a banal cough, but about a temperature below 40. Instead of sending the suspect to the hospital, the SIZO staff gave him painkillers, lawyers say.
A note is now circulating on the Internet, personally written by Mitvol to his wife Lyudmila: “Lyudochka, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Weakness. I can stand for 5 minutes. Maybe covid. In the evening they took me to Misha. I lost my bearings and started to fall. Thank God, I had a healthy guy with me, he grabbed my hand and the other for the railing and kept both of them from falling down the concrete stairs.”
Mitvol’s wife, Lyudmila, suggested that the businessman could have contracted the infection from two other patients who were placed in his cell for some time. She also complained that her husband, who was already feverish, was transferred to a less comfortable cell, in which there was no refrigerator, no hot water, or even a toilet bowl. (Representatives of the GUFSIN, however, denied this information, stating that all cells of SIZO-1 are equipped with refrigerators and TVs, and the air temperature is maintained at 21-23 degrees).
The businessman, who has media fame and expensive lawyers, still managed to escape from the pre-trial detention center to the hospital. The trial that awaits him also promises dramatic plot twists. But this story leads to the question: what is it like for ordinary citizens without special resources in the isolation ward?
