North Macedonia Convicts Ex-Secret Police Chief of Procurement Scam

The Criminal Court in Skopje found Saso Mijalkov guilty in a first-instance verdict on Tuesday of abuse of office and authority for the illicit purchase of surveillance equipment under the former authoritarian regime led by the secret police chief's cousin, Nikola Gruevski.

The former head of Mijalkov's office Toni Jakimovski, and the former Assistant Interior Minister, Nebojsa Stajkovic, were sentenced to five years in jail each for the same offences as Mijalkov.

A fourth former secret police official, Goran Grujevski, who was tried in absentia because he fled the country in 2017, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for helping them.

According to the court, Mijalkov and the other defendants procured equipment from British company Gamma International between 2010 and 2012 through a company called Finzi from Skopje, as an intermediary, instead of buying it directly from the company, which would have been cheaper.

The court found that the ultimate hidden beneficiary of Finzi was Mijalkov. After the equipment arrived, the defendants also paid Finzi on several occasions for training and phoney maintenance of the equipment. This cost the state budget 48 million denars - around 778,000 euros.

The court said that Finzi was originally founded by an offshore company in the United States, and that before being used by Mijalkov and his accomplices for the illicit purchase of the surveillance equipment, it was originally owned by the currently detained businessman Orce Kamchev, which Kamcev has confirmed.

The court found that Finzi did not have a single employee during the time of the illegal purchases, and that it was also completely inexperienced in trading with or maintaining surveillance equipment.

The first manager of Finzi...