The Skopje court ordered detention for two persons who were arrested yesterday for extorting money from businessmen. One of them, an agent of the ANB/NSA security agency – the largest and most notorious secret police service in Macedonia, was approached a businessman and demanded 75,000 EUR. In exchange, the agent, identified by the police as M.M., promised that he will derail a criminal investigation that was allegedly pointed at the businessman.

The case greatly resembles the major Racket scandal, in which Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva was extorting millions from businessmen she prosecuted. The two persons involved in the latest scandal are close to the Zaev regime and were used in some of the politically staged trials initiated under Zaev.

The other defendant, V.S., falsely presented himself to the victim as an agent of the Financial Police and the OJO public prosecutors’ office and supported M.M.’s claims to make the extortion more effective.

The National Security Agency (ANB in Macedonian) was formed from the former UBK service, that is the heir of the Communist era secret police. UBK has been in the center of several major wiretapping scandals that led to two serious political crises, including the one that brought Zaev to power in 2017. Under Zaev, the service was purged from agents that were not SDSM party loyalists and renamed ANB, while its agents and affiliated prosecutors apparently understood that they have a license to freely extort money.