During a court hearing today, former state security chief Saso Mijalkov denied allegations that he was asked by his cousin, former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, to cover up Gruevski’s purchase of land near Skopje. In one of the numerous charges against Gruevski initiated by the Zaev regime he is charged with using several businessmen, including Jordan Orce Kamcev, and his best man Risto Novacevski, to secretly purchase land in a posh part of Skopje where he wanted to build a villa.

Kamcev and Novacevski supported the allegations during their hearings last week, which prompted Gruevski to charge that they were pressured by the prosecutors to lie. Today Mijalkov, who also faces numerous cases against him, did not go down the same path.

He never asked me to cover up ownership of illegally gained property. Only Aleksandar Ivanovski (another charged businessman) claims that, and we saw no evidence about it. I was never involved in the party finances. I doubt that such sums of money could disappear from the party account without anybody noticing, Mijalkov said.

The allegation is that Gruevski got businessmen to donate to the VMRO-DPMNE party, and then used the funds for himself.