The Infomax news site reveals that the controversial decision to award a 40.000 EUR scholarship to Jana Dimitrova, daughter of Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, was partially made by the wife of one of his foreign policy associates Bojan Maricic.

Maricic’s wife, Marinela Maricic Tuseva, herself a former SDSM member of Parliament, was deputy chairwoman of the committee which decided on scholarship requests. Jana Dimitrova applied for the huge Hague scholarship in the summer of 2017. On August 4th 2017, merely two days before the 2017 municipal elections were called, which would put an end to discretionary Government spending, the committee was formed by order of then Education Minister Renata Deskoska. The very next day, as its first order of business, the committee approved the scholarship for the daugher of the Foreign Minister.

Maricic is foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, and as such cooperates closely with Dimitrov.