Board members live luxuriously; companies do not have for salaries and new mechanization

Winter 2015. An idyllic picture in Macedonia. Snow-covered land, impassable roads and many villages cut off. The public enterprise Makedonija Pat has no money for new machinery, but has money to give to the managing board exceeding the number of people under the law. Namely, the Board of Directors of this public company has 13 members, which is illegal. Using the legal right to free access to public information, SCOOP Macedonia came to data on illegal membership in the boards of directors of some companies, as a continuation of the previous research that showed how board members earn both salaries and honoraria. Under Article 21 of the Statute of PE Makedonija Pat, maximum number of members should be 5.   Lawyers say this is illegal. “Membership of more members in the Board of Directors, as stipulated in the company’s...

Board members and officials: receiving both salaries and honoraria

DOCUMENTATION   Nebojsa Stajkovic has been a non-executive member of the Board of Directors of “Macedonian Telecom” AD Skopje since April this year, after previously, since 2009, he had performed the same function in “T-Mobile” Macedonia AD Skopje. In the past 9 years at the same time he has been working as assistant minister in the Ministry of Interior (MOI) responsible for IT and telecommunications. Seemingly, nothing at stake except the fact that Stajkovic works in the ministry which is legally responsible to cooperate with operators, including “Macedonian Telecom” AD Skopje. Telecom, as it is known, has lately been particularly topical for the affair for alleged bribe of politicians associated with prolongation of market liberalization. Nebojsa Stajkovic is a non-executive member of the Board of Directors of Macedonian Telecom AD-Skopje and at the same time he works as an...

Problematic players in the casino business

Owners of casinos in Macedonia are problematic. With imported hundreds of millions of Euros to the Macedonian border with Greece, casinos remind of gambling mecca, such as Macau, Estonia or Las Vegas. But what do heads of the gambling industry hide? Center for Investigative Journalism SCOOP Macedonia investigated the conflicts with the law of the owners of temples of dice in Macedonia, casinos Flamingo and Princess, as second part of this investigation.   Novomatic scandals   The world’s largest company in gaming Novomatic Ag, based in Austria, has been involved in several scandals in countries where it operates. According to Bloomberg, “casinos in Paraguay, Peru and South Africa – countries where Novomatic operates – have been marked by the US as pipes for money laundering by criminal bosses and drug barons”. Several scandals revolve around former key people of...

Macedonia becomes Balkan Las Vegas: low standards and too much gambling

  DOCUMENTS (Note: Documents for all companies are attached on links to their names. To view them click on link DOCUMENTS)     Macedonia is at the bottom of the list of Balkan countries by foreign direct investments. Official figures show that in 2013 Macedonia attracted only 251 million Euros foreign investments, Montenegro 350 million, Bosnia and Herzegovina 300 million, while the same year Kosovo registered 259 million Euros. However, not everything is so black. Games of chance are booming in the country. From 2009 to 2015 the Ministry of Finance in Macedonia licensed six casinos with 16 subsidiaries and a record 59 slot machine casinos. “The greater the poverty, the bigger the number of betting shops and casinos”, says Dimko Kokaroski, former deputy finance minister and current professor at the Faculty of Economics in Prilep. “The greater the...

Poor municipalities hinder development outside the capital

Failing to comply with the Law on Balanced Regional Development and taking money from the concession of natural resources, the state economically exhausts the municipalities. These conditions revolt citizens from other towns. Stojan from Kocani is unhappy how the state allocates money. “Everything is built in Skopje. Nothing in the other parts of Macedonia. It seems that once Skopje 2014 has been launched, no penny has been given apart from the capital”, says Stojan. He adds that the current government respects neither laws nor rules. One of these laws is the Law on Balanced Regional Development and general revival of the municipalities. Little money and its peculiar distribution, this is the dilemma that creates confusion for Mladen Protic, head of the Centre for Development of Northeast Planning Region. “Since 2009, we, as the least developed region, have received 1...

Мunicipalities operate only for administration’s salaries, not for the citizens

Instead of government closer to citizens, municipalities are increasingly becoming institutions operating only for administration’s salaries. The investigation by SCOOP Macedonia shows that the increase in the number of employees before each cycle of local elections has led to a situation where more municipalities encash taxes and generate income only for employees’ salaries. Very few funds remain for paving streets, maintaining parks, schools or other areas important to the citizens. Salaries “eat” the money for exercise of powers Amazing 71% of the budget of the Municipality of Dolneni is spent on administration’s salaries. The payroll of this small Pelagonija municipality covers 31 people, of which 27 for an indefinite period of time and 4 for a definite period of time. We tried to get in touch with the mayor Boshe Miloshevski on how the municipality persists in these circumstances, but...

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