The Skopje court ordered police to escort the Government’s Secretary General Muhamed Zekiri for interrogation. Zekiri is being charged with awarding a contract worth almost a million EUR without having a bidding procedure. He is charged together with two Croatian citizens as his accomplices.

Zekiri, a close confidant of Zoran Zaev and de-facto head of the Albanian faction in his SDSM party, promptly resigned today after the charges were announced. A former journalist, he was, until recently, Vice President of SDSM, and is now the second Secretary General of the Government in a row to be charged with credible corruption allegations.