North Macedonia to sell off Former PM’s confiscated assets
Baku, February 25, AZERTAC
Apartments and construction lots located in prestigious neighbourhoods as well as other real-estate formerly belonging to fugitive ex-PM Nikola Gruevski and his cousin, Saso Mijalkov, will soon be offered for sale, North Macedonia’s Agency in charge of Management of Confiscated Assets said, according to BalkanInsight.
“Everything that remained unsold [before] will be sold in accordance with the [court] verdicts,” Irena Ilievska, head of the agency, told Telma TV on Monday, adding that this should happen soon.
The state expects to earn some 29 million euros from the sales, close to 8 million euros from Gruevski’s assets and some 21 million euros from Mijalkov’s.
Gruevski’s seized assets include two apartments in Skopje’s prestigious Crnice neighbourhood as well as three more in the luxury Panorama Residence building complex located in another upscale Skopje neighbourhood, Vodno.
Construction lots in Vodno and in other areas in the country are also going to be sold.
Gruevski’s apartments are estimated to be worth 1.9 million euros while his construction lots are valued at €5.8 million.
The authoritarian ruler of the country from 2006 to 2016 fled to Hungary in 2018 to avoid serving a two-year jail sentence for the illicit purchase of a luxury limousine.
But several other corruption trials against him continued in absentia.
In one of them, Gruevski was sentenced to nine years in prison for illicitly purchasing property with money intended for donations to his conservative VMRO DPMNE party.
It remains uncertain whether Gruevski will ever serve some of his prison sentences as some of the cases and sentences against him have expired thanks to a controversial change to the criminal code in 2023, which is now disputed before the Constitutional Court.
Gruevski has insisted that all the cases against him were politically motivated.
The agency’s plans come with a caveat. To sell the assets, it must first seek permission from the government, which is currently run by Gruevski’s successor at the helm of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski.
Mijalkov, who under Gruevski’s term headed the now disbanded secret police, and was seen as his eminence grise, has also faced a slew of charges.
In 2021, in a first-instance verdict, he was sentenced to 12 years in jail for masterminding the illegal wiretapping of thousands of people between 2008 and 2015. The case went for re-trial and charges against him were discontinued in 2023 thanks to the criminal code changes.
But most of his assets that are up for sale stem from another case, code-named “Empire”, in which he and others were accused of various crimes between 2002 and 2013, including criminal association, fraud and money laundering.
In exchange for cutting a deal with the prosecution in this case in 2022 and pleading guilty, he got a shorter, three-year jail term plus seizure of some 30 million euros of his assets. After serving part of his jail sentence, he was released on good behaviour.
His seized assets include 25 apartments, a construction lot in Skopje city centre and other business premises and construction land. While some were already sold, others worth some 21 million euros are yet to go for auction.
In 2024, the company of Mijalkov’s son, Jordan, Best Way Investments, bought three apartments and one garage in Vodno that had been confiscated from his father, paying under 300,000 euros for them. The law prohibits the convicted person whose assets have been seized from participation in the bidding.
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