Odrex Clinic claims pressure from prosecutor's office, appeals to Prosecutor General
Odrex Clinic (Odesa) has claimed pressure from the prosecutor's office after the death of its patient Adnan Kivan from cancer and has appealed to the Prosecutor General with a demand to conduct an objective investigation.
"Unfortunately, it all started with the death of Odrex clinic patient Kivan. On behalf of Odrex and personally, I want to express my sincere condolences to Kivan’s family, especially his son Ruslan. This is truly a human tragedy, and I believe no public discussion has the right to devalue the fact of his death. After that, the whole process began, which stopped being an investigation into the specific patient’s death and turned into systemic pressure on the Odrex clinic," Masi Nayyem, a partner at the law firm MILLER, said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
He noted that Odrex has appealed to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General to take personal control of the situation, review the jurisdiction, proportionality, and legality of key procedural decisions, initiate an internal investigation into possible conflicts of interest among officials, and request documents and the grounds for appeals to the Ministry of Health for verification.
"The investigation has lost focus on individual responsibility and has taken on the characteristics of systemic pressure on a medical institution using procedural, regulatory, and public tools," he said.
Nayyem added that "the pressure on the clinic has concrete manifestations and specific individuals responsible for making and coordinating the decisions that were taken."
"Based on the information we have, which still needs to be verified, key points of influence in this case may be linked to officials such as the head of the Odesa Regional Prosecutor’s Office, Andriy Svatok, and the head of the Strategic Investigations Department of the National Police in Odesa region, Artur Makarov. The Deputy Prosecutor General, Maria Vdovychenko, has also been particularly active, initiating and overseeing certain regulatory pressures," he said, adding that he plans to meet with Odesa Regional State Administration head Oleh Kiper on the matter.
"We are asking the state to investigate whether there is a conflict of interest, whether any actions are disproportionate, and whether legal procedures are being replaced by administrative or coercive pressure on a medical institution," he said.
Nayyem also reported that Vitaliy Rusakov, the doctor charged in Kivan’s death, is currently barred by court order from practicing and is under nighttime house arrest. Meanwhile, physician Maryna Belotserkovska resigned voluntarily and relocated to Kyiv.
Speaking on behalf of the clinic, MILLER attorney Anna Kalynchuk noted that the clinic perceives pressure, including the fact that "one of the cases is being investigated by the Strategic Investigations Department of the National Police, which is responsible for probing organized crime, terrorism, and high-level corruption."
"At the same time, this same agency is investigating a medical error case. It is a very unusual situation when prosecutors from Kyiv travel to Odesa to conduct interrogations. I apologize for the comparison, but I once had a rape victim who had to travel to Kyiv for questioning four times on her own," she said.
Kalynchuk added that "it is abnormal when corporate rights are seized on entirely contrived grounds."
"We understand that this is far beyond the law, but apparently not when it comes to the Prosecutor General’s Office. It is abnormal that in just two months we went through two inspections by the Ministry of Health. We all understand that the basis for these inspections was requests from the Prosecutor General’s Office — the prosecutor’s office does not have the authority to demand this from the Ministry of Health," she said.