Hearing over Racketeering Case Held

Businessman Zoranco Mitrovski, who serves as Honorary Consul of Latvia in Macedonia, provided in court on Wednesday his testimony in the Racketeering case. Mitrovski explained that he has been asked 2 million euros from Racketeering prime suspect Bojan Jovanovski in order to stall an investigation against him processed by the Special Public Prosecutor’s Office (SPO). “From the media I found out I was a suspect in one of the investigations of SPO. I tried to go to SPO to provide statement and documents as evidence that I am innocent, but they refused to meet me. After this, my friend Sasko Boskov informed me that he spoke to Jovanovski, and that he demanded from me 2 million euros in order to use his influence over the Head of SPO Katica Janeva to stall the case against me. I feared for my reputation and security, which is why I spoke about this with the Latvian Ambassador to Macedonia Albert Sarkanis, who later met Foreign Minister Dimitrov in order to inform him about this,” Mitrovski told the court. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted to Mitrovski’s testimony, claiming that the information about an alleged meeting between Foreign Minister Dimitrov and Latvian Ambassador Sarkanis is a lie. “Dimitrov and Sarkanis indeed met on 18 October 2019, but that was just a very short informal meeting during a cocktail party after a diplomatic event, and they have not discussed about the Racketeering case at all. Ambassador Sarkanis told Dimitrov that he had spoken to Consul Mitrovski, after which Dimitrov requested a meeting with Mitrovski, but he demonstrated no interest for such meeting,” writes the reaction of the Foreign Ministry. The trial for the Racketeering case will proceed on 27 December 2019.