VMRO-DPMNE Vice President Aleksandar Nikoloski put the estimate of the money the ruling SDSM party extorted from businessmen in the past three years at 20 million EUR. SDSM officials and their accomplices are suspected and charged of racketeering, even though state prosecutors are trying to limit the exposure of the ruling party in its numerous scandals.

Nikoloski said that SDSM leader Zoran Zaev, is suing him for slander for these publicly stated allegations, but is also doing all he can to postpone the slander case.

Zoran Zaev is pressuring the judiciary to postpone the hearings in the case he initiated against me for after the elections, because he knows that the court will determine I was telling the truth. Zaev has such controlover the judiciary he can manage the case to the point that the first hearing was scheduled 12 days after the elections. He is afraid of the facts I can reveal before the court, that he was at the top of the extortion pyramid and that many businessmen were targeted and more than 20 million EUR were taken from them, Nikoloski said.

The defendants so far include Deputy Parliament Speaker Frosina Remenski from SDSM and former Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva, who was instrumental in bringing SDSM to power, but many other party officials are suspected of involvement in the scandals.