Serbian Lottery Director Accused of Tax Evasion in North Macedonia

The Financial Police Directorate told BIRN that, as a director of ALFA SKOP DOO Skopje in 2013 and 2014, Kazic failed to report profits of 61.8 million denars, roughly a million euros, "thus failing to calculate and pay profit tax in the amount of 10 per cent of the total."

ALFA SKOP DOO is the owner of Alfa TV, one of six national broadcasters in North Macedonia.

Contacted by BIRN, Kazic said she had no knowledge of the charge against her but that she was sure there were no irregularities in the tax filings.

"This is the first I hear of this," the former journalist said. "Nobody informed me about it until now. I doubt there were any wrongdoings, but it is hard to comment at this point because I do not have all the information."

Kazic is acting CEO of the Serbian State Lottery, a state-owned company, and a former journalist of Serbian TV Pink, which is seen as close to Serbia's ruling Progressive Party.

In October 2012, BIRN revealed that the company CHS Invest Group, founded by the Serbian IT and software company Comtrade and owned by Veselin Jevrosimovic, bought a majority stake in ALFA SKOP in June of that year, appointing Kazic as director.

According to documents obtained by BIRN, CHS Invest Group paid just 150,000 euros for the majority stake, when Alfa as a whole was valued at close to 2.5 million euros.

Hungarian Peter Schatz took over majority control of Alfa in July 2017 as part of what a BIRN investigation showed was a spending spree by Hungarian interests on media in North Macedonia seen as close to former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. Gruevski lost power in 2016 and received political asylum in Hungary in 2018 after fleeing a prison sentence for corruption.

The BIRN investigation revealed that...

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