Zoran Zaev claimed that he has no information about the new cache of wiretaps being shared online, which are alleged to contain incriminating information about his chief coalition partner DUI.

The leaker, who posted a few tapes as evidence of the material he owns, claims to have hundreds of recordings of top DUI officials which will implicate them in various crimes. The DUI party, in power almost non stop since leading the insurgency of 2001, has never been subjected to thorough criminal investigations and its leaders received pardons for war crimes ordered and committed in 2001.

I was publishing my tapes in the most transparent manner possible, Zaev said about the wiretapping scandal he began in 2015 and used to bring down the VMRO-DPMNE Government, before adding that “a third of the materials which were recorded were given to us. I expect the institutions to act on the matter”.

Zaev’s statement today was seen as acknowledgement that the rogue intelligence officers who supplied his SDSM party with tapes have shared them with other people as well. Zaev insisted that he has a stable working relationship with DUI leader Ali Ahmeti.