Bojan Jovanovski – Boki 13 delivered a shocking testimony today, claiming that Zoran Zaev and other top SDSM and Government officials stood behind his scheme to develop property in sought after parts of the country. Boki 13 is charged with extorting over a million EUR from two developers to whom he promised that he will secure subsidies for the construction of subsidized retirement homes that will then be turned into private villas for profit.

I met with Zoran Zaev, and he said that it is important that we have as much domestic investment as possible. He said he was sick of having foreign companies get all the benefits, Boki 13 testified in court.

He also named then Labour and Welfare Minister Mila Carovska as a person who encouraged him to put together the scheme that eventually never took off. Carovska would have been in a position to direct subsidies toward Boki’s bogus charity group known as the International Association. Carovska denied the allegations.

Boki 13’s co-defendent, who is also Carovska’s former superior in the Ministry, is Frosina Remenski, an outgoing Deputy Speaker of the Parliament. She is the only top SDSM party official who was charged in the scandal, which, like the previous racketeering scandal that involved Boki 13 and Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva, is rumored to have included many more of the top SDSM brass. In court today she insisted that “it is not a crime to support civic organizations” because if it were, “80 percent of the members of Parliament would be behind bars”.

But it was Boki who was in the most talkative mood. He pointing his finger at Zoran Zaev, he also named the current interim Prime Minister Oliver Spasovski as supporting the plan and said that the now removed Secretary General of the SDSM party Aleksandar Kiracovski organized his meeting with businessman Siljan Micevski, who eventually paid over 750.000 EUR into the scheme. Kiracovski and Micevski both come from Bitola, where Micevski was once the powerful Mayor and remains an important businessman.

My plan to build was not fraud or crime, but a realistic project. How could I defraud a person like Siljan Micevski? He called me on the day I was arrested, as I was driving to Greece, and wished me a nice stay there. I was introduced to him by Kiracovski. We signed a memorandum of cooperation with the city of Bitola, Boki 13 said.

He is suspected of using his links with the SDSM party, of which he was a proud supporter, to get access to valuable publicly owned real-estate where he was trying to hawk the “retirement village” scheme. Other possible destinations, besides Bitola, included Ohrid and Karpos in Skopje.

Boki 13 is already sentenced to nine years in prison for the original Racket scandal. During the sentencing, he openly accused Zoran Zaev and his brother Vice Zaev of taking the extorted millions.