Russian businesswoman Natalia Gulevich, who suffers from acute kidney failure, was given a three-year suspended sentence on fraud charges on Monday and released after spending one year in custody.
In November, Gulevich was transferred from a pretrial detention center to a hospital after the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights issued a ruling.
Gulevich was arrested in December 2010 on embezzlement charges, when she failed to fully repay a 600 million ruble loan she took from a private bank, Nomos Bank. In what her lawyers called corporate raid, the bank took over Gulevich’s company and filed a lawsuit against her.
As she walked free, Gulevich said she would appeal the verdict.
“Believe me, Nomos Bank will be sitting in this cage,” she told reporters, referring to the section in Russian courts for defendants.
Gulevich said she had been asking prison doctors to provide her with appropriate medical treatment, but that all her requests and complaints had been ignored.
In early November, Gulevich’s lawyers lodged a complaint with the Strasbourg Court, demanding that she be provided with proper medical treatment.
Rights activist have compared Natalia Gulevich’s case to those of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and real estate agency businesswoman Vera Trifonova, who also were accused of white-collar crimes and died in pretrial detention centers after being denied adequate medical treatment.
