At a press conference today, prosecutor Lence Ristoska informed the public that investigators and prosecutors from the SPO still can not come to an agreement with the Administration of Security and Counterintelligence over giveing them access to the systems for wiretapping.
“We obtained two court orders from the Basic Court Skopje 1. One is to retrieve the official documentation from UBK which concerns all the wiretapped conversations and our investigators have already enumerated the documents in the report books for confiscated property. The second court order is a warrant to search their computer systems, which is specific and crucial to our job, because through it, we can determine which numbers were wiretapped. However, we still can not agree with UBK even though our prosecutors and investigators spent the whole night in shifts at UBK. This whole process has been very difficult. We are convinced to implement the court order. We are quite concerned about what kind of message they are sending to the people, when a state institution does not recognize or comply with a court order”, said Ristoska.
The prosecutor added that UBK informed them that the people who are able to access the computer systems are currently out of the county, however, they did promise that at some point today, the SPO will be given access to the systems.
Ristoska added that at the request of the SPO, in the Ministry of Interior they establish a committee, this way the Interior Ministry will have complete insight into the data. The prosecutor added that there were members from the UBK on the committee.
She said they were disappointed because of the special procedures which were introduced by the Ministry of Interior, for entering the building. Investigators and prosecutors had to wait an hour to be able to replace their colleagues in the department where UBK is located, when they were changing shifts.
