By Sinisa Jakov Marusic
SKOPJE – A flood of wiretaps published on YouTube by anonymous sources has spiced up North Macedonia’s election campaign, revealing embarrassing and even incriminating conversations involving the Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev, among others.
After dozens of covertly recorded conversations implicating various senior figures from the ruling parties in controversies and possible wrongdoings appeared lately on YouTube, Zoran Zaev said his Social Democratic Party, SDSM, had filed criminal charges against the unknown publishers.
This was “not because we are afraid of those conversations”, Zaev told the national MIA news agency on Sunday. It was because “the law prescribes that illegal wiretapping is a criminal act, regardless of whether someone wiretaps a phone conversation or records a live conversation at a meeting”.
On Friday, a recently opened YouTube channel published two short parts of conversations in which a voice, alleged to belong to Zaev, can be heard saying that he is the one financing the Social Democrats and that his predecessor at the top of party, former prime minister Branko Crvenkovski, had lost all influence.
In the second part of what is the same conversation, Zaev – whose family owns several businesses – can be heard saying that he is worth more than 8 million euros.
These were just the latest videos tackling Zaev published on YouTube since the campaign started for the early general elections on July 15.
In previous recordings, which Zaev has confirmed as authentic, dating from before he assumed power in mid-2017, Zaev’s voice can be heard mouthing profanities about his allies.
In one, he says he plans to gather all political and social forces around him to topple the then regime of Nikola Gruevski and later plans to “f..k their mother”.
In his defence, Zaev said that those words were “inappropriate” but that he was speaking after spending a few hours in a pub.
Another published conversation between other people contains potentially incriminating details about the Social Democrat leader.
In it, the alleged voice of Zoran Milevski, aka Kiceec, a businessman sentenced last year in the high-profile “Extortion” trial, is heard speaking with the Montenegrin businessman Miodrag Davidovic Daka.
In it, what is alleged to be Davidovic’s voice can be heard saying that he had given money to Zaev and his associates, allegedly in exchange for businesses favours in North Macedonia related to hydro and wind power plants, but had received nothing in return.
Back in 2015, Zaev published hundreds of wiretapped recordings at press conferences insisting that the then ruling VMRO DPMNE party under Gruevski had orchestrated the massive and illegal wiretapping of thousands of people, including his own ministers.
The publications and their incriminating content caused a deep political crisis in the country, which ended with Gruevski’s fall from power in 2017. The content of the recordings was meanwhile handed over to the now-defunct Special Prosecution, which was tasked with investigating the allegations of a high-profile crime.
Despite opening many cases, the Special Prosecution ended in a shambles earlier this year, after its reputation was tarnished by its now former head, Katica Janeva, who became entangled in the “Extortion” affair and later sentenced to jail in a first-instance verdict for misuse in office. The case cast a shadow over Zaev’s own political career as well.
But Zaev was not the only target of the recent hailstorm of new wiretaps during the campaign. On June 17, another YouTube channel published recordings of an alleged conversation between the businessman Milevski and the main opposition VMRO DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski.
In it, Mickoski’s alleged voice expresses gratitude for the help that he had received from Milevski’s associate, businessman Orce Kamcev, who was also sentenced to jail in a first-instance verdict in the “Extortion” case.
Mickoski’s voice notes that he is fighting strongly against the passage of changes in the prosecution law, which could harm Kamcev.
In another wiretap, the voice of one of VMRO DPMNE’s frontrunners in these elections, Igor Janushev, can be heard speaking with former VMRO DPMNE transport minister Mile Janakieski about alleged lists of voters. In the recording, Janushev’s voice can be heard issuing violent threats to an alleged female political party colleague.
Another batch of conversations published on Monday featured the same VMRO DPMNE characters, this time allegedly speaking about organizing a charter flight from Italy, supposedly to bring home VMRO DPMNE voters for some past election cycles.
While all of the wiretaps published do far have been posted on recently opened YouTube channels, none of the two main parties has claimed responsibility for them, insisting they are committed to waging a positive campaign. (BalkanInsight)
