Journalist Branko Geroski claims that the arrest of 1TV owner Bojan Vasilevski, better known as Boki 13, and the resignation by by Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva are linked together. Boki 13 was arrested after a series of articles in which Geroski detailed corruption and racketeering which high ranking SDSM party officials were perpetrating with Boki 13’s help and using the wiretaps that were entrusted to Janeva.
These arrests are the first decisive and harsh blow against this racketeering using wiretaps in Macedonia. I still expect to see the full details about the investigation, but I suspect this is waht prompted Special Prosecutor Janeva’s resignation. I’ve been fighting this evil for weeks and I was exposed to a number of insults and attacks. I call on the victims of the racketeering to speak up and help the prosecutors document the case, Geroski said today, as the news of the arrest broke.
Geroski was writing about the cooperation between Boki 13 and a number of high ranked SDSM party officials, accusing them of extorting money from businessmen. The group allegedly threatened the businesses with negative press, the publication of wiretaps that would harm their business, or used the TV station as a handy way to receive “donations”. Geroski named two high ranked SDSM party officials as part of the group, but used made up, but easy to discern names to protect himself from being prosecuted for libel. Geroski used “Koki” for Boki 13, while the two SDSM officials were named as Kiki and Friki. A person who, like Geroski, is a former SDSM party supporter, named Kiki as the recently deposed SDSM party Secretary General Aleksandar Kiracovski, while Friki’s identity is also widely known, and she is named as a high level female party official.
1TV rose quickly on the media scene, following the Colored revolution and the SDSM take-over of power. The TV station employed a number of outspoken SDSM party supporters as its anchors and journalists, including Aleksandar Kabranov, Aleksandar Comovski, Borjan Jovanovski (no relation to Bojan Jovanovski), Jadranka Kostova and Saso Ordanoski. The TV station was frequently compared with Velija Ramkovski’s A1 TV, which hired more or less the same people and was shut down after a major investigation in 2010 showed widespread tax evasion and pressuring of businesses. The station also hired Lazar Janev, Katica Janeva’s son, and some of its anchors, such as Ordanoski, were seen as outspoken supporters of Janeva.
Geroski claimed that the “Koki and Kiki gang” was using wiretaps to pressure a former mayor and businessman from Skopje and extorted 200.000 EUR from him, threatening to publish wiretaps. Other forms of racketeering included demanding that businesses make donations to 1TV from a position of authority given by “Kiki’s” proximity to Zaev’s Government, as well as pushing mayors from the SDSM party to donate publicly owned land to “Koki” for a bogus humanitarian project, which the group then resold for profit.
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