Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, answering journalistic questions today, revealed that they have information about several more cases of bribery within sectors in institutions, which, as he said, are currently being monitored. However, he says, what is important is that there are no cases of high-level corruption, i.e., there are no representatives of the highest ranks of officials among those being monitored.
Mickoski shared the information that procedures are being conducted for new cases of corruption in the institutions, which, according to him, will be announced soon, in response to a journalist's question for comment regarding the arrests of an assistant director at the Customs Administration and the driver of the Secretary General of the Government for accepting bribes. In the same context, the Prime Minister was also asked why there are still cases in which civil servants take bribes and why citizens report this to the Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Organized Crime and Corruption (POGOKK), which he and his colleagues in the government believe is not working well.
"We are currently following several more cases. Well, they will be made public in time," said Mickoski in response to the first part of the question.
When asked further whether this means there are new cases of corruption and in which areas, the Prime Minister said:
"In areas within the institutions, at that level, within sectors. We are following several cases and we are waiting for what they have asked the parties to dare to take. I am saying this in advance and I call on all citizens who will be victims of any systemic corruption to report it and without exception everyone will be sanctioned, I am saying this publicly. We are following, we have information about several cases and we are following them and waiting. In institutions," the Prime Minister said, he said.
At the insistence of journalists about which institutions and areas were in question, Mickoski refrained from sharing more details.
"So I told you what...you might be waiting for me to tell you my date of birth, but I'll keep that to myself this time," he said.
Previously, commenting on the cases involving the assistant director at Customs and the driver at the General Secretariat of the Government, Mickoski said he disagreed with the allegations that they had been reported to the Prosecutor's Office for the prosecution of organized crime and corruption. He said he did not want to reveal details so as not to influence the investigation.
"I would not agree that citizens reported them to the Prosecutor's Office, but I will not give details in the interest of the investigation, but I encourage citizens, and I have said this many times before, to report cases of systemic corruption in institutions, I encourage them. What is important to me is that there are no cases of high corruption. Now we must clean up and eradicate these cases through the institutions, but I would not say that there is no trust in institutions and (citizens) go to the Prosecutor's Office, but I will withhold the answer until these cases are completed so as not to influence the investigation," said Mickoski.
A call to citizens to report cases of corruption was previously issued by the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Macedonia, when they informed that the Assistant Director of Customs and the driver of the Secretary General of the Government were discovered precisely after such reports, and this happened within a period of one week.
As a reminder, the driver of the Secretary General of the Government, Igor Janushev, was caught a week ago in the Aerodrom neighborhood of Skopje with a bribe he was demanding in order to mediate a Skopje resident to get a job as a firefighter. Two days ago, also following a citizen's report, a Customs official was detained who demanded and received a bribe to influence public procurement procedures.
Otherwise, the Prime Minister, answering questions, informed that they will soon launch a project with the NGO "Transparency International", within which a telephone line will be opened through which citizens will be able to report cases of systemic corruption.
"Soon, starting today, we will start such a project with Transparency International, in which we will have an open number, an open line, to report there, and we, together with Transparency International, will implement those cases," said Mickoski.
The Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) today harshly criticized the current government, accusing it of placing the country's judicial system under the full control of VMRO-DPMNE and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski. At a press conference, the member of the party's Executive Board, Natasha Popovic, stressed that if the judiciary were truly free and independent, Mickoski and his party's leadership would not be at large and that in two and a half years the government has managed to completely partisanize the police, the National Security Agency, as well as place the prosecution offices and the courts under its direct command.
