This past year, Macedonia was also a favorite country from which criminals and drug gangs want to have a passport. Of course, they didn’t want our country’s passport because they can easily travel with it, but they could easily get to it. Some even had it delivered to their home address as a Christmas present.

The last case with such types happened at the Blace crossing, where Sokol Bibaj, an Albanian citizen with a warrant for possession of a fake Macedonian passport with a stolen identity, was allowed to escape. Bibaj had a passport with the name Andon Papi, which was discovered in the framework of the “Double” case, according to which 215 criminals received Macedonian travel documents.

Here is the Ukrainian businessman Oleksandr Onishchenko. This representative of Macedonia in equestrian sports has close ties with Russia, at first, he received positive assessments from several institutions that there are no obstacles to becoming a Macedonian citizen, but after pressure from the public, and especially from the US embassy, they decided to start a procedure to revoke his passport.

Another “fresh” case is Ljubomir Lainović. The Macedonian public would not have known about him if it had not been for the trial of Velja Nevolja’s gang. Protected witness Srdjan Lalić revealed that Igor Dedović and Stevan Stamatović from the Skaljarski gang were killed by Ljubomir Lainović in 2019.

Igor Dedović was Goran Tasevski, and Stamatović was Emil Filipov. A few days ago, Lalić revealed for the first time that Lainović had a Macedonian passport under the name of Zoran Sotir.

For the elimination of Dedović and Stamatović in the restaurant in Athens, Lainović received a Rolex watch and a BMW as a reward.

Lainović – or Sotir in Macedonian – is a well-known figure in criminal circles in Serbia. He comes from Novi Sad and his specialty is sniper shooting. His father Branislav was one of the main mobsters in Serbia in the nineties.

After obtaining a Macedonian passport, all traces are lost regarding Lainović Jr. and he is most likely in Kosovo.

The Macedonian Interior Ministry can breathe a sigh of relief because these mobsters are killing each other or are in an unknown location. In September, Jovica Vukotić, the leader of the Skaljarski gang, was also killed. He was killed on a highway near Istanbul by an unknown person who was following him on a motorcycle.

Vukotić had a Macedonian passport under the name Georgi Andonov and with it he was arrested in Istanbul in 2018 and extradited to Serbia where he served 15 months in prison. How he found himself in Turkey again four years later and whose passport he used is unknown.

The Turkish police are still looking for the member of the Kavacki gang, Zeljko Bojanić (56) from Kotor. Bojanić is the closest associate of Darko Sarić, the biggest drug lord in the Balkans.

Bojanić is a special case because he has not one but two Macedonian passports. One under the name of Spiro Agovski and the second with the name of a stolen identity of Jordan Belcev.

No one knows where the rest of the first league “Macedonians” such as Sedat Peker, the assassin working for the Kavacki gang, Stefan Djukić, the Kosovo drug lord Luis Volina, as well as the leader of the Italian Ndrangheta mafia, Valid Isa Hmais, are.