SPO presents Report on Work from September 2018 to March 2019

The Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) has processed 96% of the 606,555 audio files at its disposal, according to the Report on work for the period from September 2018 to March 2019. So far, 453,281 private conversations have been separated. When it comes to the texts the SPO has, 56% of them have been analysed. In the report, it is once again said that adoption of a law enabling the SPO to become part of the country’s public prosecutor’s office system is expected. According to the document, despite the Supreme Court’s legal opinion on the SPO’s actions and part of the suspects and their lawyers citing that opinion, it’s evident that the institution headed by Katica Janeva acts exclusively within the frameworks of its legal authorisations in its cases. The SPO adds that pre-investigative procedures for 81 cases have been opened since September. In the same period, the SPO opened eight investigations against 64 persons. The SPO has spent 16% of the approved annual budget of 3.7 million euros. In the Report, it is said that former PM Nikola Gruevski, who’s been in Hungary since November, through his lawyers, over the past four months, has been filing appeals before the Court of Appeals over the detention measure in the cases opened SPO. The appeals before the Court concerned the Trajectory, TNT, Violence in Centar and Thaler 2 cases, the Report reads. In the trials over these cases, except when it comes to Thaler 2, Gruevski is tried in absentia. The Court still hasn’t voiced a stand on some of the appeals. All remaining ones have been rejected, while the SPO, too, issued a negative opinion on them. On Friday, the trial over the Trajectory case continued. Pieces of evidence, including memoranda, bids and communications regarding the procedure to select a company to build the Miladinovci-Stip and Kicevo-Ohrid motorways, were presented. Defendants were allowed to use a laptop in order to be able to follow more easily the presentation of evidence. Among the defendants in the case are former PM Nikola Gruevski, ex-Minister of Transport and Communications Mile Janakieski and former Deputy PM for Economic Affairs Vladimir Pesevski. The same day, the trial over another SPO case, Titanic 3, continued as well. Conversations from the so-called bombs were played.