Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski resorted to his usual defense after the “Armenia scandal” and blamed his short-lived predecessor Nake Culev. The scandal showed that Macedonian diplomats flew to Yerevan in 2018 on a chartered plane and helped Levon Sargsyan, the brother of former President Serzh Sargsyan, from the country and avoid corruption charges.

In 2019 a report was received by the Foreign Ministry that it’s possible our diplomats were involved in some procedure. The Interior Ministry was informed of this but at the time there was no international arrest warrant for any diplomat. It was issued in February 2020. I was Prime Minister at the time and Nake Culev was Interior Minister. I have no precise information what was done at the time, Spasovski said. Culev was appointed by VMRO-DPMNE as interim Interior Minister in the technical Government put in place to organize the 2020 elections, and he has been blamed by Zaev regime officials for everything going wrong with the country, including the coronavirus spike and Spasovski’s major “fake passports” scandal.

Today it was revealed that the two diplomats had with them a fake passport, allegedly issued by the Interior Ministry under Spasovski, which only adds to the weight of the scandal.