English
A major scandal has engulfed the ANB security agency, after its management revealed that under the previous administration ANB was spying on top opposition officials and journalists. The surveillance was conducted between 2019 and 2024, when the agency was managed by SDSM party appointed officials – Viktor Dimovski and Zare Milosevski.
The partisan ANB leadership used a flimsy excuse – that the opposition officials were planning to undermine the Government – to justify the surveillance. The agency did not name the persons who were under surveillance but it is widely reported that the most prominent among them is then opposition leader and current Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski.
Both agencies – the Intelligence Agency and the Agency for National Security (ANB) were at the time busy with the leader of the main opposition party – me – as well as with journalists and media entrepreneurs. Let’s give time to the prosecutors, to the judges, to see a normal judicial process. These people were involved with the lives of others, hoping that his will give them some credit with those who were giving them orders, and will advance their careers. But it has come to an end. I expect that these vultures will end up where they belong, behind bars, so that we may finally put an end to the abuses of these agencies and their resources, Prime Minister Mickoski said today, confirming that he was under ANB surveillance.
ANB director Bojan Hristovski is seen as leading the investigation into the abuses of the past leadership. ANB informed that the surveillance amounted to unlawful use of technical and material resources of the agency, as well as wiretapping of communications. According to official briefings from the current ANB leadership, which reviewed the work of the agency in the past years and has submitted all relevant documents to state prosecutors, besides following the opposition and journalists, ANB also placed a prosecutor and a minister in the then Government under surveillance. The prosecutor, it has been reported, was generally loyal to the SDSM led regime, but had ran afoul of the SDSM appointed Interior Minister – which eventually led to her removal from office.
Viktor Dimovski, an old secret police hand and SDSM party official, said that he will respond to the allegations on Tuesday.
One of the journalists who were put under such surveillance came out today to confirm that there was a large dossier prepared about him. Ljupco Zlatev, who runs the Lider radio, also faced over persecution under the Zaev regime, for his reporting concerning the politization of the ANB. Another journalist who was reportedly targeted is Kristijan Landov.
The MAN association of journalists responded to the reports by saying that this is no surprise and simply confirms what was widely suspected, that “the SDSM and DUI Government was following and wiretapping the then leader of the opposition Hristijan Mickoski, other politicians, journalists, one prosecutor, businessmen and other public figures. This Government was brought to power using wiretapped phone conversations that were provided to it by former police official Zoran Verusevski, so it’s clear that it will continue to engage in unlawful wiretapping once in power”, MAN writes, reminding the public of the major wiretapping scandal of 2015, and the use of an extensive cache of wiretaps by the SDSM party.
The time has come to put an end to this evil, to the abuse of phone conversations and violations of privacy by SDSM and DUI, their media supporters and internet bots. We are aware that was was published about the abuses in ANB is not the end of it, and that there are still SDSM and DUI structures in this service who participated in these activities and have destroyed documents and traces after the change of Government. What will be surprising is if this judiciary delivers charges and sentences for the culprits, MAN added in its statement.
