Macedonian Prosecution Widens Election Fraud Investigation

Macedonia's Special Prosecution, SJO announced on Tuesday that it has added 17 new people to its list of suspects in the electoral fraud case, including more former state officials.

It has also widened the range of suspected criminal offences after reviewing wiretapped recordings of officials, chief special prosecutor Katica Janeva told a press conference in Skopje.

"After hearing the materials from the wiretapped conversations, we saw that there are more people who are involved in more criminal offences," Janeva said.

She added that in the case, which concerns the alleged organisation of widespread electoral fraud during the polls in 2013, five former government officials are the suspected organisers of the group that committed the crimes, "while the other members of the group are officials employed in various state institutions".

They are suspected of several offences, from criminal association to violation of electoral rights, violation of the freedom of voters, bribery during elections and voting, destruction of electoral materials and misuse of assets during election campaigns.

Janeva said that the SJO has acquired several unpublished audio recordings and a number of pieces of material evidence to back up its case.

The case, codenamed 'Titanic', was originally launched in February 2016. 

Back then, the main suspects were the former police minister Gordana Jankuloska, the former transport minister Mile Janakieski and the government secretary general Kiril Bozinovski, all members of the government that was then led by the ruling VMRO DPMNE party's head Nikola Gruevski.

The Special Prosecution then said it was also investigating five judges and four members of the State Electoral...