1 The Americans solved their problem with Orce Kamchev. They put him on the black list, froze his assets and accounts, forbade American companies to do business with him, and banned him from entering the United States; they sorted it out. And now, they’re saying to us – you too have a problem with Orce Kamchev. Solve it.
It’s naïve to think that the American blacklist will solve our problem as well. Look at the list with the names of the people who aren’t welcome in the USA – Menduh Tachi, Nikola Gruevski, Sasho Mijalkov, Ramiz Merko. Not welcome in the USA – more than welcome here. The Americans seem to think that someone they’ve labelled as a criminal would be ashamed in Macedonia. Who do we expect to be ashamed? In our country, the prosecutors and the judges have been dragging their heels on their cases for years without a hint of shame, and the ones who are truly shameless are the politicians from both the government and the opposition who changed laws so that these “labelled individuals” could carry on with their business. We can’t expect anything less from the defendants who are facing imprisonment for the crimes they’ve committed.
“The abuse of office, money laundering, bribery, and other offenses Orce Kamchev participated in not only eroded public confidence in North Macedonia’s justice sector, but also represented a significant betrayal of the people of this country”, said U.S. Ambassador Angela Aggeler.
But, she also said that they won’t come here to make arrests or initiate legal processes against them, but “it will be interesting to see what actions will be taken after this labelling”.
Since, the evidence is here, not in Washington.
And who’ll take “those actions”? The judges and prosecutors appointed by Gruevski and Mijalkov with their party notebooks? The same people Kamchev was busy negotiating with so they’d set him free? They couldn’t stop out of greed, first he fed them, then he stapled their stomachs in his hospital. Does the ambassador really believe that the state institutions in the current form will start doing their job?
The U.S. Ambassador might find it interesting to observe how the state will handle the labelled Orce Kamchev. As for us, I’m not really sure. Apart from the fact that we can sit back and poke fun at the bribed state attempting to deal with the very person who bribed it. Poking fun at the corrupt institutions attempting to prosecute the very person who corrupted them in the first place.
2 How will the institutions deal with that? Here’s how. First, the same way one member of the Judicial Council was elected. As the only candidate from the Supreme Court, with six votes, one of which is his own. The same way his first decision will have to be to elect his son as a judge once he completes his studies at the Academy for Judges and Prosecutors.
Let’s give his son a chance too. In order to get into the Academy of Judges, he had to pass stricter criteria compared to what his father had to do to become a member of the Judicial Council. Let’s not forget that the President of the Council of Public Prosecutors, Antonio Jolevski, a few months ago, after the election of the prosecutor for organised crime and corruption, Islam Abazi, who was photographed with Ali Ahmeti, said that “he should be given a chance”.
Why don’t they pass a law that would legalise private court-prosecutor firms? That would allow people to choose the court they want to preside over their cases. With a price list, with a list of services, with the names of experts, in the most transparent manner, everything will be done in accordance with the laws, and if necessary it could be fast-tracked in the Assembly. That way the state would be able to provide subsidies to the genuinely competent prosecutors and judges, since, the state judiciary can’t offer such expertise. It’s more or less the same thing as when we choose a doctor in private hospitals. Instead of offering bribes to doctors in state hospitals, you pay according to the price list in a private one, and if he’s really good, the state will give your money to the owner of the hospital through subsidies.
Once those court-prosecutor firms enter the free market of crime, we’ll be able to measure their rating. It will be a challenge for them to compete against each other. The jet-set criminals will brag: Do you know who I’ve hired to prosecute me and try me? They rock! They’re expensive, but really good. They’re busy handling my case, so I don’t know if they’ll be able to take you as a client as well, but if you want, I can recommend you to them.
To paint the whole picture and to showcase the dazzle of the glamorous lives of the crème de la crème of the Macedonian society, in a country where crime and criminals are romanticised, the media will undoubtedly cover the glamorous stories from the hearings. I bet it will be prestigious to reveal which criminal hired which court-prosecutor firm. It’s not like this business and political elite would settle for just any prosecutor, for just any judge.
The most respected court-prosecutor firms will be the ones that will provide the criminals with such charges that the court will find easy to dismiss. Accordingly, they’ll be paid the highest fees. Everything will be done fair and square, in accordance with the law.
3 Meanwhile, the fight against crime and corruption will have to wait until the Prosecutor’s Office and the Anti-Corruption Commission are on good terms again. The Prosecutor’s Office announced that it’s freezing relations with the Anti-Corruption Commission because they violated several articles of the cooperation memorandum.
Two state institutions from the same field, paid with the money of the same taxpayers, in the same country, are terminating their cooperation. It’s puzzling because they signed a memorandum of cooperation just a while ago. As if they couldn’t cooperate without a memorandum.
Nevertheless, despite the frozen memorandum, preparations to combat organised crime and corruption continue. Public Prosecutor Ljubomir Jovevski has been actively engaged in diplomatic efforts in the country. With the director of the Financial Police Office, Goran Ivanov, they discussed “closer cooperation and coordination of actions between the Prosecutor’s Office and the Financial Police aiming to ensure efficient criminal prosecution”. The day before, he successfully reached an agreement with the Ministry of Internal Affairs to “enhance cooperation and speed up the handling of cases”.
And then, we wonder why the Dutch Ambassador and the U.S. Ambassador expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of expected results according to the investments made by Dutch and American taxpayers in the Macedonian judiciary. See? People are doing their job, they’re having meetings, and they’re reaching agreements about the unimaginable – getting the Prosecutor’s Office and the Police to start cooperating.
These are just preliminary talks. Something along the lines of a screening process before the start of the actual negotiations for an agreement take place. And once they sign a memorandum of cooperation, it’s truly the end of corruption and crime.
The only thing I’m concerned about is what the legal procedure is if the case with the Anti-Corruption Commission is repeated, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Financial Police violate an article of the Memorandum of Cooperation with the Prosecutors’ Office. Who’ll handle the dispute? The Court of Arbitration in Paris?
4 The high state official appointed by DUI, Ismet Guri, has been arrested on suspicion that while serving as the deputy director of the IRS, he formed a criminal association with a fictitious VAT refund scheme. A few days later, in a retrial, because the Court of Appeal returned the process to the beginning, there was a verdict of three and a half years in prison for Guri, for election fraud and destruction of election material, a verdict which is not yet effective.
Ismet Guri is a member of the “Fiery” group, which operated as a faction within the party, and it was recently announced that it will become a political party.
It’s not like Guri is a victim of political prosecution. He was convicted for the first time in 2020. But his party didn’t mind that and kept him in a high position in the IRS. In the IRS! Not some agency with a pretentious name they made up just so he’d get a salary. The IRS, no less! The place where the money of the citizens and the economy is collected.
So his mistake isn’t that he falsified election results and that he stole from taxpayers, but that he threatened the unity of the party.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
