Former Deputy Prime Minister Naser Ziberi said that the controversial move by disgraced prosecutor Katica Janeva to give up her case files is illegal. Janeva, who is in detention on charges of abuse of office and high level corruption, gave all the files that her SPO office was working on to the larger OJO office of state prosecutors, in an apparent agreement with the Zaev regime to allow it to continue prosecuting opposition officials.

The existing SPO law states that the Special Prosecutor can assume responsibility over cases ran by OJO. It doesn’t provide the reverse option, Ziberi said during a televised debate.

According to him, the decision by Public Prosecutor Ljubomir Joveski to have the same prosecutors from the SPO office, which is effectively being disbanded with Janeva’s decision, to continue to work on the same files under OJO auspices is also illegal.

The cases can’t be handed down automatically. The process requires that an analysis is performed on all of the prosecutors who were transferred from the SPO to the OJO. Some of them should return to their home town services. These prosecutors are contaminated and their actions are illegal, Ziberi said.

Even as the Zaev Government insists that the transfer of the case files and the prosecutors is final, his SDSM party continues to negotiate with the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party, which was the main target of Janeva’s campaign, to come up with a new law that would regulate the chaotic situation in the judiciary.