VMRO-DPMNE member of Parliament Ilija Dimovski criticized the public procurement of gambling machines worth nearly 7 million EUR ahead of the elections.

The contracts were ordered by the Macedonian Lottery, a state run gambling operation which is managed by the Government. It signed contracts with a Bulgarian company to purchase 1.500 gambling machines in a highly suspicious deal approved on January 3, a day before the forming of the new, caretaker Government. Dimovski today said that a similar contract with the Bulgarian Euro Games Technology company was also signed in April 2018 for 7.4 million EUR, or a total of nearly 14 million EUR.

As the elections draw near, and the ruling SDSM party is down in the polls, public sector hiring and spending is kicked into overdrive, with contracts being fast-tracked for approval before the vote.