Directly from Strumica, our office received a request for an apology and public withdrawal of the text entitled “PART ONE: Zaev and Angjusev involved in a 200 million euro crime – together with Russians!” taken from the “Lider” website, signed personally by outgoing Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.

Although the text has been taken from another website with a cited source, we are professionally publishing the request for an apology and public withdrawal of the text published on the Lider news portal although the text is not intended to offend anyone or harm one’s reputation.

Since it is a research conducted by journalists from another news portal, which is transmitted on our news portal “Republika”, we fully convey the response to the request to “Lider”.

The TE-TO energy company was founded by the Macedonian company “Toplifikacija” in partnership with “Biter Holding” from Cyprus, which is owned by Russian oligarch Leonid Lebedev. In 2018, it tops the list with a profit of as much as 120 million euros, but symptomatically, the same year the most profitable company in the country went bankrupt.  Many media outlets have been continuously writing on the matter since the summer of 2018, meaning for a year and a half, and shareholders of “Toplifikacija” testify to that, about which, Prime Minister, you are probably already informed. The subtitle “What is the involvement of Prime Minister Zaev” with a screenshot of the Government’s 160th session held on October 22, 2019 supports our claim that you are undertaking the obligation to sign a decision granting state aid to TE-TO or the state to write off of 20 million EUR in debt owed by the company, which should go to the budget.

Hence, we do not find it necessary to apologize or withdraw the text, especially as other media have been writing about this matter, reads the response to the outgoing Prime Minister’s request.