The Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office for Prosecution of Organised Crime (BPPOPCC) and Corruption has started a pre-investigative procedure over former PM Nikola Gruevski’s escape to Hungary. “There are grounded suspicions that certain official persons, abusing their official position and authority, enabled the convicted person to illegally leave the Republic of Macedonia,” it said on Wednesday. The case has been given ...

Macedonia and Bulgaria will hold a joint governmental session at the start of December. The session will match the putting into use of part of the Struma motorway between Kresna and Sandanski, Bulgarian PM Boyko Borissov said following Thursday’s meeting with his counterpart, Zoran Zaev, in Sofia. Commenting on the Nikola Gruevski case, Borissov reiterated that the former PM had ...

A roundtable on revision of financing of political parties and election campaign was held on Thursday. According to the Head of the EU Delegation to Macedonia, Ambassador Samuel Zbogar, parties need to be transparent over how they are financed and who their donors are. As he added, illegal financing represented a great risk from the standpoint of corruption. The President ...

According to VMRO-DPMNE, the authorities should be held accountable for former PM Nikola Gruevski’s escape. “The political theatre on Monday took place in order to cover up their own powerlessness and incompetence. We disagree with his decision to go to Budapest. That is not an option even when everyone knows that it’s about political persecution because, that way, the others ...

Hungary’s authorities aren’t interested in revealing how former PM Nikola Gruevski reached the country without a passport. FM Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday that the procedure to file an asylum request was over, adding that more details wouldn’t be revealed until a decision was made on it. Viktor Orban’s Press Chief, Bertalan Havasi, denied the information that the PM had ...

“Nikola Gruevski is the one who managed to reduce Macedonia to a captured state under his reign, as per the report of the European Commission back in 2016,” FM Nikola Dimitrov said in a statement on Wednesday on the latest developments related to the former PM. The FM pointed to the content of the wire-tapped materials. “All of us here, ...

Wednesday’s hearing over the Titanic case, opened by the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO), was postponed for 23 November because there were no conditions for it to be held. Former PM Nikola Gruevski, who is in Hungary, wasn’t present. Former Minister of Transport and Communications Mile Janakieski and ex-Government Sec Gen Kiril Bozinovski, who have been in detention in the prison ...

At Wednesday’s public session, the Criminal Court’s Criminal Council rejected the appeals filed by the defence and confirmed the decisions made by the judge in a previous procedure to accept the proposal for a detention measure in the Empire case, opened by the Special Prosecutor’s Office. There are 13 suspects in the case, including the former UBK Director, Saso Mijalkov. ...

“In the last few days I have received countless threats to my life. I am in Budapest now and I have asked for political asylum from the Hungarian authorities. I will always remain true to the cause of Macedonia. I will never give up,” former PM Nikola Gruevski wrote on his official Facebook page at around 1 pm on Tuesday. ...

The trial over the 27 April 2017 attacks in Parliament continued on Tuesday. In the messages found during the expertise of former Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski, Viber communication has been found in which the then-leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Nikola Gruevski, on 26 April 2017, forwarded a message to Veljanoski that he had received from the then-Director of the Public Security Bureau, ...