There has been no stop to the scandals in Macedonia. After the recent escape of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski to Hungary, which remains unclear, the latest one announced by the public prosecutor Ljubomir Joveski is that in the last two years, the landlines of all prosecutors were monitored, which immediately initiated a pre-investigative procedure.
Nearly three years ago, the current prime minister, and the then leader of the opposition, Zoran Zaev, began releasing the so-called “Bombs”, i.e. a series of wiretapped conversations of the highest representatives of the then government headed by Gruevski – now a fugitive of justice and asylum seeker in Hungary.
For the prosecution of crimes and criminals arising from the wiretapped conversations in Macedonia, a Special Public Prosecutor’s Office was established, which launched a series of large-scale trials in which many former officials were charged.
The equipment that was used in the wiretapping was eventually destroyed (illegally, claims the SPO), and in the meantime a new so-called Operational-Technical Agency (OTA) was created. The new agency is meant to monitor whether someone is illegally wiretapping communications.
The media has reported that there is a number of sophisticated wiretapping equipment in Macedonia, discreetly pointing out that they could be owned and used by major political parties.
For now, it remains unclear whether in this latest case the headquarters only had the opportunity to record the landline phones of the prosecutors or someone had downloaded and used it, or whether the conversations were used for blackmail or coercion.
Zaev and Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski have vowed a thorough investigation, but the damage seems to have been done – the general public already finds it hard to swallow statements like “no one is wiretapping anymore” and the shrugging of shoulders over Gruevski’s scandalous escape through three countries and four borders , for which there is also an investigation.
