Macedonia’s Court of Appeal rejected on October 5 the complaint filed by ex-prime minister Nikola Gruevski, and confirmed his two-year prison sentence in a case related to the purchase of a luxury Mercedes worth around €600,000.

This was the first verdict for Gruevski, 47, also former head of the now opposition VMRO-DPMNE, who has been charged in four other cases launched by the Special Prosecution Office (SPO), including the TNT investigation, which relates to the demolition of a €58mn residential complex in Skopje which was owned by Gruevski’s political rival.

“The complaints of the accused N.G. declared personally and through his defence attorneys have been declined as baseless, and the court fully confirmed the first instance verdict,” the Court of Appeal said in the statement. The original verdict was issued on May 23.

Gruevski said he will file a complaint to a higher court. “This is a classic political persecution and I will use all legal remedies available. There is no need for new evidences, because there is already much evidences of the defence for this case," Gruevski said.

The Court of Appeal decision came at a delicate time for Macedonia, following the failed name deal referendum, aimed at opening the way for the country to become a Nato member and to launch EU accession talks next year.

While an overwhelming majority of people who cast their votes backed the name deal, under which the country’s name will be changed to North Macedonia, turnout was very low, meaning that yes votes were well below 50% of the electorate. 

Now the government needs support from the opposition to gather a two-thirds majority of votes in the parliament to implement the deal with Greece, which will be hard to achieve as VMRO said previously it won’t back constitutional changes if turnout of 50% is not reached. Holding early election is a next possible step.

While the result was a blow for the government, there are also signs of divisions within VMRO: the party recently dismissed its deputy secretary general Petar Bogojeski, in a move he claims is intended to thwart the reform processes within the party. Bogojeski wrote on his Facebook page that VMRO at this moment is completely “on the wrong side of history”. 

Wiretapping scandal 

The charges against Gruevski are related to crime and corruption revealed in a wiretapping scandal which erupted in 2015 when former opposition leader and now Prime Minister Zoran Zaev released a series of illegally recorded conversations among officials from the conservative VMRO-DPMNE. Gruevski was in power in Macedonia from 2006 to 2016. 

In the same case dubbed “Tank”, the court sentenced Gjoko Popovski former assistant minister of internal affairs to six and a half years in prison for abusing his power. However, the Court of Appeal lowered his sentence to four and a half years.

Former interior minister Gordana Jankuloska, who directly contacted Gruevski to find out what kind of Mercedes he wanted, is also charged in the Tank case, but the court launched a separate court procedure for her due to her high-risk pregnancy.

As in the meantime she gave a birth to a child, the trial continued and the verdict for Jankuloska is expected to be issued by the basic court on October 8.

The SPO was set up in 2015 to probe crime and corruption revealed in the wiretapping scandal, which brought down the government led by VMRO-DPMNE in 2017 following more than a year of mass protests and political unrest culminating in the storming of the parliament by nationalist protesters linked to the then ruling party. Under VMRO-DPMNE’s rule, the work of the SPO was obstructed, but this was changed under the new government led by the Social Democrats.