Second Fraud Revelation Linked to North Macedonia Highway Firm Officials

Marjan Ivanov, former manager of Euro Consulting, the company that has been engaged to supervise the construction of stretches of the cross-European highway corridors 8 and 10d in North Macedonia, is a suspect in a fraud investigation related to the former government's grandiose revamp of the capital, 'Skopje 2014', BIRN has learned.

Ivanov was ordered a year ago to report to the Criminal Court once a week as a suspect in an investigation related to the construction of a baroque facade for the government building that was completed as part of the 'Skopje 2014'.

The revelation about Ivanov emerged a week after BIRN also revealed that the owner of Euro Consulting, Branislav Dimitrijevic, is wanted by Armenia for large-scale fraud in the construction of the Caucasus country's north-south corridor when he was a team leader with the Savage-Eptisa consortium.

Euro Consulting, together with another company from North Macedonia, Electra Solution and the Spanish firm Eptisa are part of the Italian IRD consortium that won the tender for the supervision of the highway sections in North Macedonia that are to be built by the US-Turkish consortium Bechtel-ENKA.

Passport confiscated 

It emerged in April 2022 that North Macedonia's Public Prosecutor's Office for organised crime and corruption had opened a case related to the facade of the government building, which is part of the Skopje 2014 project, instigated and funded by the former government then led by authoritarian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. Parts of the new facade crumbled to the ground last year, despite being only few years old.

The prosecution had four suspects - the manager of the company Bauer BG, the ex-director of the government's Service for General...