Nikola Gruevski

North Macedonia's fugitive former prime minister Nikola Gruevski could face a fresh money laundering probe following reports that he used money transferred from his home country to start new business ventures in Hungary, the former prosecutor of the now defunct North Macedonia's Special Prosecution, SJO, Lence Ristovka, said.

The Criminal Court in Skopje on Monday in a first instance verdict sentenced former speaker of parliament Trajko Veljanoski to six years and six months in jail and former transport and former labour ministers, Mile Janakieski and Spiro Ristovski, to six years and three months in jail each.

The former head of the secret police, Vladimir Atanasovski, was jailed for six years .

North Macedonia's new draft law on the control of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, which the government approved on Monday and will be sent to parliament soon, where is likely to be passed by the ruling majority, will enable exports of cannabis flowers for medical purposes.

American football stars Lance Briggs, Turk McBride, and Donnie Caldwell, backed by the founder and director of the famed Exit music festival in Serbia, Dusan Kovacevic, have told BIRN that they have already picked a location for growing medicinal marijuana in North Macedonia.

Marred by controversy from the start, partly because of its steep price, and partly for its dubious artistic choice, drawing inspiration from Classical antiquity, the brainchild project of former PM Nikola Gruevski was originally promoted as giving a brand-new look to the shabby-looking City of Skopje.

North Macedonia's Organised Crime Prosecution on Wednesday filed charges against the country's fugitive former prime minister, Nikola Gruevski, and some of his former close associates, in a high-profile case linked to the illicit purchase of building sites.

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.

Recently-detained business magnate Orce Kamcev has long been the focus of controversy in North Macedonia, where he had close connections to the authoritarian government of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.

Tobias Zech, a legislator from the centre-right Christian Social Union, CSU, the ruling party in Bavaria and sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU, has quit after Germany's Spiegel revealed that he lobbied for Nikola Gruevski's ousted authoritarian regime in North Macedonia in 2016.

North Macedonian law enforcement has placed the businessman Orce Kamcev in 30 days' detention in Shutka prison near Skopje, on the request of the Organised Crime Prosecution, which said there was a risk he might flee the country.

The prosecution on Sunday said it requested his detention after receiving "info from the National Security Agency that he might be preparing an escape".