REPRESENTATION 2: RESTAURANT INVOICES ARE HIDDEN AS IF THEY WERE A STATE SECRET

authors: Bjanka Stankovich, Angela Petrovska and Angela Rajchevska (here you can read Part One) Searching for the true picture of how rationally the municipal bureaucracy behaves and whether for the citizens’ benefit, the SCOOP research team visited several municipalities. Under the Law on Free Access to Information, it addressed all 82 municipalities. From most of them we received data and documents on how and what the mayors and their administration spend the money of their fellow citizens for. ALCOHOLIC DRINKS AND SWEETS BOUGHT The SCOOP research team sent requests for free access to public information to all municipalities in the Republic of Macedonia. Municipal officials were requested information on the municipal budgets, annual sums for representation expenses, as well as invoices for representation in the last five years, that is, from 2012 to 2016. The Municipalities of Resen and...

Representation: Empty holes for full stomachs

DOCUMENTATION authors: Bjanka Stankovich, Angela Petrovska and Angela Rajchevska   Fifty cuts of lamb cost 17,500 denars, 30 pieces of white cheese – 7,500 denars, and ten kilograms of hard cheese – 3,880 denars. A total of 30,324 denars, or 500 Euros were paid by the municipality of Ohrid to the company Kamimpex for an undefined “catering” service. But this is not the record of the Ohrid administration. In one day someone put a signature on an invoice for spent 41,580 denars or about 650 Euros, also for restaurant services where they had salads and rakija, grills, wine, chocolate cakes and cognac. BOTH RICH AND POOR MUNICIPALITIES SPEND ON RESTAURANTS Fried zucchini, seafood risotto, meat, grilled squid, ice cream, cake and fruit…were not enough in one day for one or more “related” parties paid with tax money, so they...

Cardboard for Curtains: Life in Macedonia’s Hospitals

April. For many it’s the best time of year, when people wake from a cold and long winter. For others, such as nurse Hava Sait Nexhip, it means the beginning of an annual, months-long water shortage at the medical campus outside Skopje where she has worked for eight years. “Each April till September we don’t have water,” Sait Nexhip says, though she can offer no explanation. “But this year we didn’t have water beginning in March. We get water from the village tap just for hygiene purposes. We only use it for washing dishes and hands. So we manage somehow,” says Sait Nexhip, who is concerned for her and patients’ health. Among those patients is the mayor of Aracinovo, the local municipality, to whom they have repeatedly appealed for help with the water shortage, only to be told it’s not...

Parties’ property – invisible in reports

Parties’ finances are under scrutiny of the institutions, but not as much as their property, which should be available to the public, experts comment on the SCOOP-Macedonia published story, where we published detailed title deeds of the four main parties. Although the parties claim that they regularly make inventory and submit these documents to the state institutions, however, on their web sites no annual financial statements can be seen, let alone what they own. Even from the State Audit Office they say that parties’ property is mentioned in the reports only in passing, and their focus is on the money on political parties’ accounts. Looking at the parties’ financial statements prepared by the State Audit Office, the parties’ property is mentioned only in passing and only in cases where auditors have concluded certain conditions. For example, in the Annual...

SCOOP reveals political parties’ property: from fields and pastures to luxury apartments and buildings (update)

DOCUMENTATION Shops, yards, fields, buildings, flats…This is just part of the ownership of the ruling VMRO-DPMNE, which appears as the owner of 100 title deeds where places unknown to the general public can be seen. The biggest properties owned by the party of ex-Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski are in Saraj, Kisela Voda and Centar, where VMRO-DPMNE owns buildings, apartments and pastures. Unlike them, SDSM owns far smaller property; the main one is located at Bihacka Street. DUI is ranked third in the official list of acquired property, whereas DPA does not appear to own property. VMRO-DPMNE with biggest property According to documents obtained by SCOOP, VMRO-DPMNE owns property in almost all municipalities in Macedonia. The party has a property even in Mal Papranik, a place with hardly fifty houses. Nikola Gruevski’s party has most title deeds in the municipality...

Between personal gain and public interest: are the media also to blame for the crisis?

When the government began to implement campaigns and advertise them, most of the private media in Macedonia entered the race to grab a larger share of the pie. Experts say that not only advertisements but also tenders buy media support. This situation in the Macedonian media market has raised several questions and dilemmas: Have the media become a cover for the business? Can a medium as a private property take into account only their income, although performing a public activity? Are private media obliged to keep account of the public interest? By signing the Przino Agreement, which undertook reforms in the media, another key question has opened: are the media to blame for the political crisis by not having adhered to journalistic standards and ethics in their work?   BUSINESS AND MEDIA – WINNING COMBINATION   Overall, behind the...

Comments

comments