Macedonia Finds Way to Prolong Special Prosecution's Work

Macedonia plans to incorporate the Special Prosecution, SJO, into a separate department of the regular Public Prosecution, which would allow it to complete its ongoing investigations, the Deputy Justice Minister, Oliver Ristovski, said.

In an interview for Nezavisen daily, published on Friday, Ristovski said the draft changes would also give the SJO an additional mandate to investigate other high-level corruption issues in future that do not originate from the last government's illegal wiretaps - the reason for its foundation.

"The SJO will continue its investigations that stem from the wiretapped conversations because we see that there is still material for prosecutors' work, but it will also work on other cases of high-level corruption ... of officials," Ristovski revealed.

He said the draft changes to the Law on Prosecution, designed to boost its effectiveness and independence, were being done in cooperation with international experts and with the help of the US embassy.

"We should fully wrap up these changes by the end of 2018," the minister added.

The Special Prosecution was set up in 2015 as part of an EU-sponsored political crisis agreement.

It was tasked with investigating alleged high-level crimes that came to light from the wiretapped conversations released by the then opposition Social Democratic Party, SDSM.

Although the SJO was given five years to investigate the wiretaps, it was given only a short deadline to press charges regarding those cases, which expired in June 30 last year.

The SJO managed to file charges in some 20 cases by the June deadline. Almost all of them concerned officials from the former ruling VMRO DPMNE party, which was in power from 2006 until April...