The competent Court in Skopje sentenced the news portal www.frontline.mk to MKD15, 056 (€250) and a public apology to the leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, for the published article on February 26, 2023, which claimed that a million euro property belonging to the opposition leader was discovered.

The VMRO-DPMNE leader sued the news portal for, “violating the Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights as well as the Macedonian Journalist Codex”.

The Court decided that the defenders news portal www.frontline.mk and Jabir Memedi as its publisher – both extremely anti-opposition news outlets – for republishing the slender previously published by news portals Index.mk and Infomax.mk without checking the truthfulness of the same”. It could have been easily done by opening the Macedonian Cadaster’s web page, the Court concludes, but the portal published the information nevertheless, additionally changing the title to increase readership. The verdict also determines that the defender failed to prove the truthfulness of the published “facts”.

The news portal wrote that Mickoski owns a property worth one million euros, registered to the name of his sister, which was very far from the truth, and the pontiff proved that.

The same news portal was sued in 2015 by a large foreign company for publishing untruthful information that a worker died at the factory floor, only because the then ruling party VMRO-DPMNE brought the investment.

“This is how the shame for ruling parties’ lying looks. On the great Christian holiday of Prochka (Forgiveness), they started a campaign of lies, insults, and fabrications against me and my family. They intended to equate me with them and picture me as a political profiteer and a criminal. To that end, SDS and DUI turned their media servants on me, to offend mine and the honor of my family with their lies, fabrications, and constructions”, Mickoski wrote on his Facebook post after the verdict.