Skopje, 10 January 2023 (MIA) – The Skopje Public Prosecutor’s Office has filed an indictment against Skopje doctor Zhan Mitrev, as a physical entity, and against his hospital, as a legal entity, charging them with fraud.

The charge carries a sentence of one to 10 years in prison.

According to the indictment, key facts as regards hemofiltration were concealed, namely the patients hadn’t been fully informed about the method, all of its positive and negative effects, thus they were misled for financial gain, it was noted at a press briefing Tuesday at the Skopje Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The prosecutors said that 283 patients have requested damages saying they felt deceived, however, adding there were others who haven’t requested damages.

As regards the clinical trials and bacteria, it was stated at the press briefing that they are not part of the charges because competent institutions are probing these elements.

During the investigation, the Skopje prosecution said, the public prosecutor gathered evidence to support the suspicion that the accused in the period from June 2020 to June 2022 in order to acquire significant financial gain for his private hospital he had concealed facts, thus misleading the patients receiving Covid-19 treatments in his hospital by being subjected to hemofiltration as well as the members of their families, pressing them to cause a damage to their assets in a total amount of 97,461,600 denars (EUR 1.57 million).

The accused insisted telling his patients and the public that hemofiltration is a method approved and efficient in Covid-19 treatment all the while taking advantages of the health crisis caused by the pandemic.

In a press release, the Skopje Prosecution Office says Mitrev shouldn’t have promoted the method as Covid-19 treatment while hiding the fact that the method has not been approved for treatment of the illness neither by the company, nor by health authorities in our country. Any authorization for medical use had been issued only in an emergency procedure due to the pandemic under defined criteria and scope of use.

“In addition to the potential benefit, the treatment also had serious potential risks, which should have been shared with the patients. The method shouldn’t have been promoted as a safe and efficient treatment or prevention from Covid-19,” stated the press release.

Last year, the court accepted doctor Mitrev’s one-million-euro guarantee that he won’t flee the country while under investigation.

Last year IRL, the investigative journalism site, broke a story revealing that the Zhan Mitrev Private Hospital in Skopje had charged patients large sums of money for hemofiltration as part of Covid-19 treatment. The method wasn’t reported to the national drugs agency MALMED.