Zaev’s pressures on the state prosecutors caused a rift in this service, Telma TV reports. According to the report, prosecutors from the organised crime department demanded that the not guilty verdict Zaev received last year for his 2015 corruption case is overturned on appeal.

But, the higher state prosecutor’s office agreed with the not guilty verdict and demanded that the charges against the Prime Minister are dropped. This would be a highly unusual move, that prosecutors don’t appeal a serious corruption case, and illustrates the stranglehold Zoran Zaev and his regime have over the judiciary.

Zaev was charged with asking a bribe from businessman Ivan Nikolov Sacevaliev. Sacevaliev reported the case to the police and wore a camera, clearly recording Zaev as he is asking for hundreds of thousands euros in bribes so that he, as then mayor of the city of Strumica, would approve the sale of publicly owned land. In the recording, Zaev instructs Sacevaliev to pay 2 EUR per square meter of land he intends to buy, and to deliver half to his brother Vice Zaev, and the rest to the “church” – likely a Zaev ally in the local parish.

This was the second similar corruption case raised against Zaev where he avoided any penalty. In 2008 he was charged with signing a lucrative deal with a company who does business with his family companies to develop a mall in the center of Strumica, built on land that was supposed to be returned to its rightful owners after being seized by the Communist regime. The restitution request was ignored and the company built the mall in partnership with the Zaev led municipal authorities, but then received a far greater share of the mall than it would have under market prices, effectively damaging the municipality. Zaev was promptly pardoned from these charges by then President Branko Crvenkovski.

The Appeals court agreed with the lower court that Zaev is not guilty in the 2015 case. The decision was made in December 2018, but the public was not informed at the time. The sentence was published, fittingly, on April Fools day 2019. And now, it is revealed that a service of the state prosecutor’s office, which should prosecute Zaev, recommended that the Prime Minister is not sentenced, undermining the case of their colleagues from the organized crime division. The state prosecutors, as well as the Special Prosecutor’s Office, are under increasing Government control and are being used in a massive campaign of persecution and intimidation of the opposition parties, while completely ignoring well supported allegations against Government officials.