“They gave me half a pillowcase”: how ex-Deputy Minister of Emergency Situations Gurovich waited for the verdict

The interests of the official were represented in court by a nun

On the last working day of 2023, the Moscow City Court sentenced former Deputy Minister of Emergency Situations Andrei Gurovich. He received 5 years in prison for fraud with the Fund for Assistance to the Development of Civil Defense and Emergency Bodies. The amount of damage caused to the state amounted to 328 million rubles. The author of these lines had the opportunity to observe Gurovich’s stay in a pre-trial detention center as a member of the Moscow Public Monitoring Committee. Interestingly, one of the official’s defenders was… a nun!

Gurovich’s case was accompanied by several scandals and incidents. During the arrest, security forces confused his house with the house of a high-ranking Moscow official and first broke into his neighbor’s house, quite frightening the civil servant.

First, the former deputy minister ended up in the Kremlin Central pre-trial detention center of federal subordination, which is located on the basis of the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center. Gurovich did not admit his guilt and immediately expressed his readiness to become a member of the SVO. It is interesting that, according to rumors, the criminal prosecution of the deputy minister was a consequence of the tragic death of his boss, Minister of Emergency Situations Evgeny Zinichev in September 2021. Gurovich did not accompany the minister on the fatal trip, but he was also considered an indirect culprit of the tragedy.

In the pre-trial detention center, Gurovich tried to read as much as possible to distract himself. The first book he took from the prison library was Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. In the Kremlin Central he did not complain about the conditions of detention, he even praised the local food. But he was soon transferred to pre-trial detention center No. 4, which at that time was filled to capacity. Human rights activists found Gurovich in one of the buildings in terrible conditions. The inhabitants of the cell took turns sleeping on the floor; the new “guest” was given half a pillowcase. Gurovich was in complete shock – in a conversation with human rights activists, he admitted that he did not imagine that such pre-trial detention centers existed. In addition, the light bulbs did not work in the tiny cell; almost no daylight came into it. The official was also impressed by the food – “the smell, taste and appearance were horrifying.” After a complaint from human rights activists, the “closet” was occupied, and he was transferred to a cell where there was a separate bed and normal bed linen.

It is interesting that one of Gurovich’s lawyers is a female nun who permanently lives in a monastery. She received a blessing for a legal education, and again, with the blessing of a clergyman, she protects people. True, in this case the nun was unable to help her client avoid punishment – even though he fully repaid the money stolen from the budget.