The shocking open letter published by Racket defendant Bojan Jovanovski – Boki 13 alleges that Zoran Zaev was extorting money from companies to which he awarded lucrative coal mining contracts in the REK Bitola plant. This plant – the key energy capacity in Macedonia – is currently running at minimum capacity after years of corruption and mismanagement under Zaev and Macedonia is forced to import extremely expensive electricity day in – day out.

The flamboyant showman Boki 13 was sentenced to nine years in prison for extorting money from businessmen, along with Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva, but has claimed that he did not have the political clout to do the crimes he is sentenced with. Near the end of the first Racket trial, Boki 13 revealed that Zaev was at the top of the scandal, and that he, Janeva and other suspects were just his enforcers.

When you were selectively releasing wiretaps in the public (during the 2015 Colored Revolution), you requested money from businessmen whose recordings you had. Those who paid were spared – you did not release their recording and you did not hand them over to the Special Prosecutor’s Office. I’m now charged with defrauding Bitola based businessman Siljan Micevski (pictured, right). You had wiretaps on Micevski, about various issues, and you used SDSM official from Bitola Aleksandar Kicarovski (pictured, left) to approach him and to seek donations for the SDSM party. Micevski agreed and went to Strumica to deliver 250,000 EUR to you, in cash. Only one of his tapes were released, where he is discussing an election. That was the first rate of his payments. You know full well about the other payments he made, and you will have to answer about them, Jovanovski writes in his letter, directly addressing Zoran Zaev.

Furthermore, Jovanovski writes that Zaev’s brother, Vice Zaev, mediated in the awarding of contracts in REK Bitola, in the lucrative coal mining segment where private companies like the one ran by Micevski are hired as subcontractors for the state owned energy company. Then, Micevski was pushed to share the profits from the contract with the Zaev family and the SDSM party.

In one instance, when Siljan Micevski won a contract to work with REK Bitola, your brother Vice Zaev approached him directly asking for his cut of the contract that ran in the millions. He came asking for the money before the contract was even paid out. I was present when hundreds of thousands of euros were given by Micevski to Vice Zaev in my office. His man Kire, who you also know well, who drove a white Audi with Strumica license plates, came twice to collect the money. At one point, Micevski told me that you are a senseless bunch, that you take more money from him than he can collect for the mining contract. I have this claim recorded on my phone, as material evidence, and this is only one example of your extortion, Bojan Jovanovski adds in his letter.

His defense continues to demand that the evidence from his phone and the WhatsApp messages Boki 13 exchanged with Zaev and other SDSM officials are admitted as evidence in the current, second Racket trial.