The trial against Doctor Zan Mitrev and his clinic of the same name, in which both are
charged with fraud, started at the Criminal Court in Skopje. At the beginning of the trial, the
defence lawyers demanded for the first hearing to be postponed, claiming that they had no
insight in the 48 medical records used as evidence in the case. Prosecutor Iskra Hadzi-
Vasileva claimed that the request is unsupported, because the files have already been
delivered to the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office by the legal entity charged in the process,
prompting Judge Lidija Petrovska to deny the defence’s request for postponing of the
hearing. The charges against Mitrev and his clinic were filed through rumours, after the
Investigative Reporting Lab (IRL) published a documentary in which they reveal that patients
were treated for COVID-19 at Zan Mitrev Clinic with hemofiltration method, for which the
hospital did not secure consent by the patient’s relatives, and which they had no official
authorisation for.