Pro Government media outlets in Macedonia are completely ignoring the revelation that close relatives of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev have registered companies in the city of Petric, in neighboring Bulgaria. Opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski revealed that the companies are named Gomasindra and Orient Trade, and are registered by the Prime Minister’s cousin Trajce Zaev, who is involved in the family marijuana growing business. Zaev’s in-law Radisa Bojovic also registered a company in Petric named Radisa Trade.
Although the televised debate was billed as the “duel of the decade” by the pro-Government Kanal 5 TV station where it aired, and much of the country watched Mickoski name the companies, while Zaev sheepishly denied knowing about it, most of the media are afraid to question Zaev about it any further, and the silence in the pro-Government media camp is absolute. VMRO-DPMNE spokesman Dimitar Arsovski asked the ruling SDSM party to disclose what is the purpose of these companies, and whether it is true that they are created with the purpose of offering transportation services to the large Ilovica copper mine being built east of Strumica, toward the border with Bulgaria.
There is reason to suspect that at least two of these three companies are created in order to have them participate in the construction work related to the Ilovica mine. The companies have a stated purpose to offer logistics services. Are they purposely created to win contracts which are expected to reach at least ten million EUR in value annually, as the large quantities of copper mine are transported to Bulgaria for smelting?, Arsovski asked.
As opposition leader whose stronghold is in Strumica, Zaev campaigned against this and the near-by Kazandol copper mine. His SDSM party joined environmentalist NGO groups in the region and pushed for a series of local referendums to ban the mines, all the while accusing the Nikola Gruevski Government of deliberately wanting to “poison the villagers and their crops” by allowing the opening of “two mines of death” in the region.
The Kazandol project was ended as the investors withdrew, but after Zaev formed the Government he did a 180 on the Ilovica mine and is now a proponent. This raises the suspicion that the price the developer Euromax Resources will have to pay to get the mine approved would be to grant significant contracts to the Zaev family.
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