The Director of the National Agency for Educational Programmes and Mobility, Lidija Dimova, on Tuesday held an online press conference after being embroiled in allegations of misuse of funds of the EU’s programme for education, training, youth and sport, Erasmus+.
Recently, the A1On web-portal published an investigative story claiming that EUR 270,000 in EU grants in the past three years had been awarded to a hair salon in Skopje, owned by Zoran Zlatkovski.
“Anyone can apply for grants from the Erasmus programme. All organizations can be beneficiaries. Recently, it was allowed individuals to apply for funds as part of the Youth section. Only political parties are banned from applying,” Dimova told the news conference.
Referring to Zlatkovski, she said she’d known him since being at the helm of the Agency in the past three years ago. Zlatkovski has been cooperating with the Agency since 2011, Dimova claimed.
Speaking at the news conference alongside her, Zlatkovski said it was fake news that his hair salon had been awarded money. “I applied with the company called ‘V.E.Z. Trade’, which has a separate account intended only for Erasmus projects, developed in cooperation with the National Agency. The hair salon, registered as a beauty parlor, is an entirely different thing,” he said, adding his company had been applying since 2018 and had won a grant estimated at EUR 53,000.
The projects, Zlatkovski explained, were in connection with education of youth for media literacy and have been successfully implemented with participants from countries that were involved as partners. As part of the projects, a series of training were organized that saw the participation of nearly 50 high school students.
“They traveled abroad to attend media literacy training,” Zlatkovski said, adding a show had been taped, which is scheduled to be aired by the national broadcasting service in late October. “Because the project proved successful, I applied for Erasmus funds this year as well,” he told the news conference.
Moreover, recently it has been revealed that a vocational high school in the country won a grant in amount of EUR 83,000 for ‘training a Croatian donkey and a Lipizzan.’
At the news conference, Dimova accused the lawyer Aleksandar Tortevski of stirring confusion about the project. She said she believed it was Tortevski that had ‘ulterior motives’, because he had sued the National Agency after cutting a portion of the funds previously approved for one of his projects.
Referring to a project involving EUR 54,000 for students of a vocational school to go to Cyprus for training, she said it involved a wrong translation of the word ‘hospitality’ in Macedonian.
Furthermore, the head of the National Agency has been accused of purchasing three vehicles. Dimova said they had been taken on a lease and should be returned after three years.
On the opposition’s calls for her resignation, Dimova responded: “I have to disappoint VMRO-DPMNE, but I’m not stepping down.”
“I’ll remain head of the Agency until the real dilemma is solved – what has happened with EUR 2.2 million embezzled by those who led the Agency before me,” she stressed.
At the news conference, Dimova said the European Commission had praised the National Agency for the work it had done last year.
“A great number of applications for 2020 have been sent. Also, in addition to the defined budget, last year we managed to brought in additional EUR 3.7 million for elementary and secondary education and EUR 4.6 million this year,” she claimed, noting that the process for applying and approving projects was ‘complex and under the watchful eye of the European Commission.’
