Investigators who were tasked to work on the 2021 Besa bus accident near Sofia that killed 46 people were removed from the state prosecutor’s office.

According to the SDK news site, the group of investigators were reassigned to other cases, as was the investigator working on the major scandal in the Interior Ministry, which was found to have issued over 200 passports to known regional and European criminals.

What the both cases have in common is that they directly target Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski, the main Zaev loyalist remaining in the Kovacevski Government. Spasovski is obviously a person of interest in the investigation in the passports scandal, even though it was quickly covered up with sentences handed to a group of low level clerks in the passport office.

In the case of the bus tragedy, the investigation is focused on a company named Via Komerc Dzemalj, that carried out the inspection of the ill fated Besa company bus. The Interior Ministry is tasked with overseeing the work of garages that have permits to conduct vehicle inspections. Several months before the disaster near Sofia, the company was found by the Interior Ministry to be incompetent in its work and Spasovski was officially required to issue an order that Via Komerc Dzemalj is shut down. But he did not do so, allegedly because the company had ties with Albanian partners in the ruling coalition.

Spasovski did sign the order three days after the disaster, when the entire country demanded answers. Prosecutor Vilma Ruskoska, who led the organized crime prosecutor’s division informed the public that she is looking into Spasovski, but was quickly removed from office over this, and now the prosecutors who were working on the case are out too.