Austrian Ambassador Georg Woutsas addressed via a press release criticism at the judiciary
of North Macedonia and demanded dismissal and annulment of the licences of all judges,
prosecutors, enforcement agents and notaries who are in any way involved in a dispute
between the Austria-based company AMMA Import Export and the Valandovo-based
company DENA Product Import Export, owned by Atanas Kostov. In this dispute, the
Austrian company is unable to acquire from the Macedonian company 4.5 million euros of
compensations determined in a decision of an international arbitrary court. While the judicial
authorities took many months to process the decision, the Macedonian company managed to
transfer all its property to another company Global Trade DMM, which is in ownership of
Emilija Zaeva-Kostova, wife of Kostov and cousin to former PM Zoran Zaev. In his
statement, Ambassador Woutsas notes that the implementation of the arbitration decision
became a serious challenge for the Austrian businesspeople, because, as he claims, the two
companies in question, helped by other similar local companies and by notaries and agents,
took series of measure sin order to avoid the payment of the 4.5 million euros for
compensation. Woutsas claims that the owners of these two companies managed to
manipulate the Real Estate Cadastre of North Macedonia as well in order to sell some of the real estates owned by the companies. Former PM Zaev said he will file slander lawsuit
against the Embassy unless they issue him a formal apology.