The trial in the ‘Vodno Lots’ case against ex-PM Nikola Gruevski, Sasho Mijalkov, Jodran Kamchev, his mother Ratka Kunovska-Kamcheva, Risto Novachevski and Nenad Josifovikj, started on Friday at the Skopje-based Criminal Court.

Judge Ilija Trpkov is the presiding judge in the trial, while Lile Stefanova is the prosecutor.

According to the prosecution, Gruevski – the prime suspect in the case – from 2006 to 2012 had acquired at least 79,972,140 denars (EUR 1,300,360) after personally receiving the donations and failing to report them to be included in the party’s financial reports.

From October 2012 to September 2013, Gruevski had put the money into circulation by buying construction land in Vodno via a daughter company of a Belize-based company. Novachevski, who was the best man at Gruevski’s wedding, served at the manager of the daughter company.

After being embezzled, the prosecution says, the money was transferred on the bank account of the daughter company. “Novachevski used the money to pay the land owners in order to hide the source of the money and the real owner of the land covering an area of 11,000 square meters,” according to the investigation.

Furthermore, from July 2015, after the release of wiretapped phone conversations revealing the ownership of the building property, until 2019 Novachevski in a bid to hide the real owner had transferred the ownership to another company.

Former PM Gruevski fled to Hungary in 2018, while Mijalkov and Kamchev are currently in detention. Precautionaty measures have been ordered against the rest of the suspects in the case.

Investigation into the ‘Vodno Lots’ case launched in October 2020.