Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce’s family was able to purchase a huge plot of land on Mt. Vodno for prices that ranged between 10 and 25 EUR per square meter, far below the market price, VMRO-DPMNE spokesman Naum Stoilkovski revealed today. The opposition party blew the whistle on the highly suspicious land sale of more than 15.000 square meters, where plots were bought by the family of Filipce’s wife, one of Filipce’s advisers and a controversial businessman who got contracts worth millions of euros from the Healthcare Ministry.
From the contracts it is clear that the land was purchased for prices ranging from 10 to 25 square meters even though, since a year before the sales, the land was zoned for development. The actual market price can go up to 115 EUR per square meter. It’s possible that the land was paid for the actual market price, but that the sellers agreed to present a lower price to reduce the tax that had to be paid. This would constitute fraud against the budgets of the city of Skopje and the Karpos municipality, Stoilkovski said, asking Filipce to also explain the origin of the money, given that, if the actual, market value price was paid, the land would be worth several millions EUR.
Stoilkovski asked Filipce to answer whether the plan behind the purchase of the land was to build a “retirement village” – a scheme promoted by showman Bojan Jovanovski – Boki 13, who is now charged with racketeering. Boki 13 was close to both Filipce and the Mayor of Karpos Stefan Bogoev, and the scheme included building retirement homes using public subsidies, then turning them around for a profit as the homes would be sold as luxury villas.
Comments are closed for this post.