Opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski described the situation in the Macedonian judiciary as alarming, after the latest scandal to hit the disgraced Special Prosecutor’s Office and its prosecutors were found to have awarded themselves huge bonuses in violation of the law.

At a time when we have a criminal Government, we find out that the judiciary and the prosecutors were wide open to corruption. This problem was fed and built up by the Zoran Zaev Government. Zoran Zaev did nothing to reform the judiciary over the past three years, on the contrary, he is the main obstacle to this task and prevents us from having justice in Macedonia, Mickoski said during a press conference.

The VMRO-DPMNE leader insists that the SPO was a “tool used by Zoran Zaev and his Government to implement its partisan agenda”, to extort money from businessman and to pay back the SDSM party supporters and activists with public funds.

After the years of endless spectacles by the SPO, these self-proclaimed Charlie’s Angels, who spoke only of justice, the rule of law and the Constitution, are now revealed as a tool if political persecution and as protectors of crime. Bonuses worth tens of thousands of euros, far surpassing any salary in the public service, were given to them. These bonuses explain why so many journalists were defending Katica Janeva, her SPO and the Zoran Zaev Government, and were attacking VMRO-DPMNE, Mickoski said.

The three foremost prosecutors, Janeva, Lence Ristovska and Fatime Fetai, received fawning international coverage in 2015 and 2016, during which time they were compared to Charlie’s Angels, Beyonce and similar off the top comparisons.

Mickoski described the investigation into this latest scandal involving the SPO as “pale”, given that state prosecutors have been ignoring a VMRO-DPMNE request to investigate Janeva’s finances since the summer.