Zoran Zaev’s Secretary General Dragi Raskovski threatened to sue the media outlets who reported on the leaked audio tape which revealed him discussing a public procurement contract and using racist slurs.

Raskovski held a press conference today to explain his side of the story, which has quickly turned into a major corruption scandal for Zaev’s Government and raised allegations of rigging the contract in favor of the Italian Leonardo company against other European competitors.

Despite the fact that Zaev assumed power in Macedonia leaking a cache of illegally recorded wiretaps, Raskovski announced that he will sue the outlets who reported on it for slander. He named a number of them, such as Expres, Kurir, Infomax and Lider, as well as individual journalists such as Goran Momirovski, Ljupco Zlatev, the Levica party and the former Government official Valon Bela who accused him of widespread corruption.

One of the journalists, Zlatev from the Lider news site, asked Raskovski “how does it feel” to be able to use the judiciary against your critics in the media. Raskovski declined to answer.