Witness Liljana Todorovska, who today testified in a hearing in the second Racket trial, said that Education Minister Mila Carovska was involved in the elaborate scheme to extort money from businessmen. Todorovska was the author of a plan to bring public subsidies in the retirement industry – mainly to subsidize retirement homes.

Todorovska said that in 2017 Carovska, who was then Labour and Welfare Minister and would be in charge of the scheme if it was adopted by the Government, instructed her to attend the inaugural meeting of the International Association. This bogus charity was set up by showman Bojan Jovanovski – Boki 13, who used his close ties to the ruling SDSM party to extort money from businessmen – both by threatening them with criminal charges through his friend Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva, and by enticing them with the promise of lucrative, Government subsidized deals.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the type of people there. That is when I met Bojan Jovanovski, Jasna Mandic and Kristina Blazevska, testified Liljana Todorovska, who was pushing for the program since 2012 before eventually being drawn by the group set around Boki 13.

She said that she was then invited by the International Association group to develop her plan through them, and soon the group got Bitola based businessman Siljan Micevski to give them over 700,000 EUR, with the promise that the retirement homes will be subsidized, and then will be turned into commercial real-estate for a huge profit.

Todorovska was taken to collect the money from the bank, and then Blazevska took them in a bag, indicating that the group was using her to cover up their tracks.