Albanian Customs officers apparently erased the recordings showing former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski going through a border crossing with Albania, during his trip to Hungary where he claimed political asylum in November.

Macedonian authorities, who say they are investigating how Gruevski left the country and crossed through Albania, Montenegro and Serbia before reaching Hungary, asked their Albanian counterparts for the recordings, but were told they are no longer kept. According to Public Prosecutor Ljubomir Joveski, Albanian authorities replied that the recordings from the cameras positioned in the border crossing with Montenegro are automatically deleted after a while, and this is the case with the wanted tapes.

The way Gruevski was allowed to leave the country remains a mystery. The police organized a virtual siege of his VMRO-DPMNE party at a time when he was already out of the country, and the international arrest warrant was issued by the Interior Ministry only after he was in Budapest. Calls for accountability from Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski fell on deaf ears.