There is no legal basis for the Public Prosecutor’s Office to take over the SPO cases because according to the SPO law it is the SPO that is solely responsible for prosecuting crimes related to and arising from illegally intercepted communications, lawyer Sanja Aleksic said, who represents defendants in SPO cases.

In a statement for “Republika” she recalled that it was the SPO that was able to take control of cases that fall within the real jurisdiction of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at any stage of the proceedings.

And so it happened, in December 2015, the SPO took over cases from BPPO Skopje, which is why it is absurd after four years to return the cases to BPPO Skopje, which is contrary to the SPO law and ultimately why SPO was formed if the cases taken from BPPO Skopje are returned to the same prosecution and how much it cost the Macedonian citizens, Aleksic says.

Aleksic points out that under the SPO Law there is no possibility for the public prosecutor who manages the SPO to delegate the cases to BPPO.

To make things worse, the takeover of the cases is made on the order of a public prosecutor detained on suspicion of abusing their office for personal gain precisely in connection with prosecution, she said.