Former Prime Minister and VMRO leader Nikola Gruevski said that the Zaev regime is pressuring businessmen and both people he knows and doesn’t know to testify against him in new staged criminal trials. Gruevski, who received political asylum in Hungary because of the persecution he faced in Macedonia, says that the cases are being staged to distract the public while Zaev is preparing to make new concessions with the Macedonian national identity and history.

As expected, the criminal Zoran Zaev is continuing with his persecution of those who think differently from him. While his Government was handing out passports to top European and global drug runners, the institutions under his control are putting tremendous pressure and are blackmailing both people i know and some who I don’t know, forcing them to become false witnesses against me in fabricated cases, trying to allege that I was purchasing land and apartments with funds from my party. Zaev does not think twice before personally sending messages to some of the victims, promising them leniency if they falsely testify against me. He has no problem with going so far as to have people detained and kept without water for days, Gruevski said.

He did not identify the targets of this treatment. Businessman Jordan Orce Kamcev, who greatly damaged the Zaev regime when he revealed the extortion he was facing from Zaev’s loyalist – former Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva – is currently detained in one of the charges also aimed at Gruevski, and his defense team claims that he is subjected to torture and water deprivation.

Gruevski notes that Zaev began his term as Prime Minister by undercutting a well documented corruption investigation against him, for bribery while he was Mayor of Strumica. A top police official involved in this investigation – Mitko Cavkov – was sentenced by the Zaev regime to 18 years in prison in the April 27th trial.

According to Gruevski, Zaev is preparing a number of cases against him as a red herring, which he will use once his back is against the wall and he has to make new concessions on Macedonian national identity issues. Despite making numerous concessions already, and receiving little in return, Zaev is currently reinventing himself as a political who protects Macedonian national interests.

But Gruevski warns this new version of Zaev will not last and that the regime will be forced to bend the country’s spine again, likely after the October municipal elections.

It’s obvious this is all being planned for the period ahead of the elections, but also after them, when Zaev’s planned period of patriotic cosplay ends and he begins making new concessions with our national interests. This Balkan fraud will need new cases that will distract the attention away from him, from his extortion and crimes and from the marijuana businesses he awarded himself using the Prime Minister’s authority. While deeply involved in crimes, he will pretend that he’s actually fighting crime. But all that Zaev has been doing over these years will be revealed and he will be held accountable. His entire criminal scheme and dirty tactics will be punished, Gruevski writes.