VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski claims that Zoran Zaev is the lead coordinator of the racketeering group that was using the power of Katica Janeva’s Special Prosecutor’s Office to target businessmen and extort money from them. Mickoski was using the now popular nicknames for those involved in the racketeering case that caused a political crisis in Macedonia, as journalists avoid libel charge threats by writing about “fictional” people and events.
The public needs to focus specificaly on the testimonies given by the businessmen who were targeted by “Kiki”, “Friki”, but also the coordinator of the entire case, which is Zoki Poki, Mickoski said, clearly using the last nickname for Zaev.
Both Zaev and Janeva denied any direct involvement in the racketeering, and Janeva insisted that her and Zaev’s close friend, 1TV station owner Bojan Jovanovski – Boki 13, is the main culprit. Many have raised doubts that the cross dressing showman had enough clout and leverage to extort 1.5 million EUR from businessman Jordan Orce Kamcev, and to extort various other sums of money, allegedly in the hundreds of thousands of euros, from other businessmen, without high level political and judicial backing.
According to Mickoski, there is no doubt that outgoing Special Prosecutor Janeva was involved in the extortion, given her established character. Mickoski has blamed Janeva of trying to directly blackmail him, promising that she will lift her freeze on the property of the opposition party if VMRO votes to make her position permanent.
The true purpose of the charges initiated by the Special Prosecutor’s Office was to pressure, threaten, blackmail and extort money from businessmen and politicians, Mickoski said, adding that the institution is operating wholly outside of the law, as it continued to press charges even after its legal deadline to do so expired in mid 2017.
The opposition leader again dismissed the proposal to have another Zaev loyalist, prosecutor Vilma Ruskoska, named as the next Special Prosecutor. Mickoski said that it would be as if VMRO nominated an outspoken supporter of the right, judge Vladimir Pancevski, as the next Special Prosecutor. “He has a reputation, is credible, was voted a top professional by people in his line of work for years. Why not have Mr. Vladimir Pancevski in charge of this unit?”, Micoski said during an interview with Sitel TV.
He went on to name the long list of close relatives of politicians or people from the judiciary close to Zoran Zaev who were hired in the SPO, adding that, under the law proposed unilaterally by Zaev, all of them, even Katica Janeva, would be allowed to remain part of the state prosecutor’s service.
Katica Janeva resigned as chief Special Prosecutor, but under the law she would be allowed to transfer in the state prosecutor’s office. All the other prosecutors, who helped Katica Janeva, regardless whether they were indirectly involved in the racketeering, will be transferred into the new SPO unit. This includes Janeva’s nephew, her future daughter in law, two of prosecutor Bubevski’s cousins, the son and the niece of one other prosecutor, the daughter of the dismissed MEPSO director Vasilevski, judge Lidija Nedelkova’s son, and all the other friends and relatives hired by Katica Janeva. The law provides that they will all be transfered into the state prosecutor’s service. How can we have the people who were accomplices to racketeering be kept on as alleged crime fighters?, Mickoski asked.
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