North Macedonia Top Official Charged With Helping Fraud

In a case that the local media in North Macedonia have already nicknamed "Extortion 2", the vice-president of parliament, Frosina Remenski, has been named as the third accused and charged with helping to commit fraud. She had previously insisted she was innocent.

The new case is practically an expansion and extension of the ongoing "Extortion" case, which is already in a trial phase, which has rocked the government and implicated a senior prosecutor since last summer.

As with the original case, the first accused in the new case is the showman-turned-businessman Bojan Jovanovski. The new case focuses on the dealings of his humanitarian charity, the International Alliance, with which Remenski was linked.

According to the new charges pressed by the Prosecution for Organised Crime, Jovanovski, as head of the charity, between July 2017 and April 2018 duped two businessmen into giving him almost one million euros that they thought were intended for a centre for the elderly. He did so by falsely persuading them that he would acquire a state building lot, as well as state subsidies, to build the centre.

The charges say that Remenski, a former honorary president of Jovanovski's charity, helped Jovanovski to persuade the businessmen to hand over the cash, using her authority.

"The third accused, with her reputation and authority, supported the first accused during the meetings [with the businessmen], giving him advice and instructions, so that the plaintiffs would gain confidence in the alleged project, pay a certain amount of money and sign the contracts," the prosecution said in a press statement on Friday.

The prosecution added that it had filed charges against five people in the case, all linked to the same charity.

Dismissing...