The second-largest pharmaceutical laboratory in Russia was shut down by government authorities this morning after images of its workers engaging in group sex in the sanitized area of the facility.
The facility located in Tver, about 110 miles from Moscow, was temporarily closed for 90 days for an urgent inspection after photos and videos posted by one of its employees on a Russian social network, a Russian consumer oversight agency reported.
In the photographs and video clips posted two weeks ago by worker Anatoli Romanov, a group of undressed employees engages in various sexual acts in a 200-gallon container of vaginal yeast infection cream.
The deputy chief of the Tver region’s sanitary inspection agency, Adriana Boyko, said a rapid inspection of the site led to the discovery of the container where the workers were bathing as well as a mass of other violations of sanitary-epidemic norms.
“We found several used condoms at the bottom of some of the tanks and saw countless rodents running around the facility. There were pictures of naked men everywhere. It looked more like a sordid gay sauna than a pharmaceutical plant.”
Ms. Boyko says nine employees of the facility were arrested for and several arrests could take place over the next few weeks.
“We seized several new images from the employees’ phones suggesting this kind of gay sex party had been going on for years in there.”
The appalling conditions and outrageous practices at the Tver laboratory are quite a common occurrence these days in Russia as sanitary oversight has become virtually nonexistent, said Dmitry Ioukov, a Russian consumer service expert.
Mr. Ioukov cites other similar cases that took place over the last few years, including an ammunition factory in Omsk that was closed in 2013 after the employees filmed themselves throwing grenades and artillery shells at each other.
Unfortunately, the Tver facility produced more than 40% of surgical masks and 30% of the hand sanitizer used in Russia to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources from the Russian Health Department say the country should be able to compensate with imports until the end of the inspection.