Macedonia's Wiretap Whistleblower Hails 'Fairytale' Ending

Gjorgi Lazarevski, one of three former Macedonian secret policemen who are credited with handed over wiretapped recordings of official conversations to the then opposition leader, Zoran Zaev, said he was delighted that his actions had exposed and ultimately brought down the government of Nikola Gruevski.

"I am still recovering. I am simply not the same man any more. But the satisfaction I drew from the fact that we managed to uncover this systemic evil is very important," Lazarevski said in his first public appearance, in an interview for NOVA TV.

In February 2015, the then opposition Social Democrats, led by Zaev, began releasing batches of covertly recorded tapes that they said proved Gruevski's government was behind the illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people, including ministers, politicians, businessmen, journalists, scholars and others.

The opposition claimed the tapes proved that top government members and their associates had committed other crimes as well, including schemes to rig the 2013 local election and the 2014 general and presidential election, manipulate the justice system, keep a tight grip on media and cover up the murder of a young man by a police officer.

Many of these allegations are now being investigated by the Special Prosecution, the SJO, or already resulted in charges being brought against top former officials, including Gruevski.

At the time, the then Prime Minister claimed the whole affair was a political set-up instigated by unnamed foreign intelligence services.

After a prolonged political crisis, Zaev's Social Democrats, SDSM, finally formed the new government in May, ending the 11-year reign of Gruevski's VMRO DPMNE party.

Lazarevski said he first found out that the...