Former Interior Minister Nake Culev dismissed claims from the current Minister Oliver Spasovski about any involvement in the major Armenia scandal.

Spasovski tried to deflect after the reports that in 2018 at least two Macedonian diplomats, apparently armed with a fake passport, helped Levon Sargsyan, the brother of the former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, flee the country. When asked about the scandal, Spasovski claimed that he knew nothing at the time, but inserted a comment that when an arrest warrant for the two diplomats was made public, it happened in Culev’s brief term as Interior Minister, and with that tried to deflect blame from himself. Culev responded today.

My role in the technical Government was to implement the election laws. It was a brief period of time and during it I faced major obstructions in my attempts to point to a number of major crimes perpetrated by top Interior Ministry structures. While I was Minister, none of the pawns appointed by Oliver Spasovski ever informed me about this crime of international proportions. On the contrary, they did all they could to skillfully conceal his scandals. If Spasovski is looking to assign blame, he should look for it in the officials appointed by him and the Government. I call on the institutions to investigate and reveal to the public who was issuing false passports and concealing international scandals, Culev said.

After being in a state of shock for a couple of days, starting today, spokespeople for the Zaev regime are trying to spin the scandal and to blame the opposition for it.