Pro-Government media outlets were ready and well briefed on Thursday evening, when they came out with a report that a judge has ordered the arrest of police officials promoted by the new, interim Interior Minister Nake Culev.
Culev, who was appointed to lead a thoroughly compromised department as the candidate of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party, quickly denied the report that the men are part of his team, and said they were appointed to their positions by his predecessor Oliver Spasovski who the SDSM party now promoted to interim Prime Minister. In either case, the late evening drama left the impression of rival police structures fighting each other, with SDSM concerned about maintaining control over the police, which it used for years to carry out politically motivated arrests.
It was only this morning that more facts about the case became clear and they are deeply ironic. The four officers were reportedly part of a sting operation in 2014, when then opposition leader Zoran Zaev, as Mayor of Strumica, was asking for hundreds of thousands of euros in bribes from a local businessman interested in purchasing a piece of publicly owned land. The businessman reported Zaev to the police, and wore a camera, recording their conversation, in which Zaev clearly asks for money and gives instructions how they should be given to him.
The tape first leaked in 2015, when Zaev was himself sharing illegally obtained audio recordings of VMRO officials and (most often falsely) claiming that they were involved in various crimes. The leak was apparently meant to show to the public that Zaev, who was once pardoned for similar corruption, is a deeply corrupt person. A longer recording was leaked mid last month and it shows Zaev using curse words about the name of Macedonia, as he discusses that the US and the EU will make him Prime Minister in order to change the name.
Although the tape has been leaked before and has been shared between the Interior Ministry and the office of state prosecutors years ago, charges have apparently now been brought against the officers who did the original sting operation. Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said that the operation was led by former Interior Minister Mitko Cavkov, who Zaev had arrested on “terrorism” charges to 18 years in prison. Zaev himself was found not guilty of corruption in 2017, even though the tapes were admissible before court and contained clear evidence against him. The sentence was given at the height of his power and stranglehold over the police and the judiciary.
Despite false reports in the pro-SDSM press that the officers were detained, or were part of Culev’s team, it was later revealed that they only had their phones taken by the judge and that other people will also be investigated in the leaking of the tape.
The whole case is ironic, given that Zaev owes his position to the extensive propaganda campaign in 2015, in which he used and distorted illegally recorded audio conversations of his political opponents. At the time, his SDSM party insisted that “heroic whistleblowers” from the Interior Ministry like former spook chief Zoran Verusevski, were so revolted by the crimes they would hear while illegally recording phone conversations that they had to go public with the facts. Zaev demanded whistleblower protection laws for the police officers who recorded the conversations and gave them to him. Now, his supporters in the media are going after police officers who they accuse of doing the same – sharing evidence of a clear crime perpetrated by a top Government official – a crime which went unpunished, with the public.
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