IRL dismantles, for the first time, the scheme through which prosecutors manipulated the course of justice in North Macedonia.Behind the institutional façade, a quieter system operates — one shaped by networks of influence embedded within the law-enforcement structure. IRL’s investigation reveals how crucial decisions are forged away from public scrutiny: behind office doors, across desks stacked with case files, and within the bureaucratic machinery that quietly determines whether justice proceeds or quietly stalls. This investigation is not merely a chronicle of irregularities inside the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Skopje. A document obtained by IRL illustrates something broader and more troubling — a system capable of bending when political or institutional interests demand it.
Reported by: Bojan Stojanovski
When a criminal case is concluded in a basic court, the process rarely ends there. In most cases, it moves to the next judicial level — the Court of Appeal — after either the prosecution or the defense challenges the verdict.
But once the case enters this stage, it changes hands.
The prosecutors who handled it at the basic level — or those from the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Corruption — are no longer responsible for representing it. Instead, the case is taken over by prosecutors from one of the country’s Higher Public Prosecutor’s Offices.
At that point, the decisive power shifts.Higher prosecutors hold the authority to determine the ultimate trajectory of the case — often long after public attention has faded.
Before the appellate courts, they can defend the prosecution’s position or quietly dismantle it. With a single procedural decision, a higher prosecutor can effectively halt a case even while it is still moving through the appeals process. They may withdraw the indictment or abandon the appeal entirely. Once that happens, the appellate court is left without the legal basis to continue deliberating the matter.
North Macedonia has four Higher Public Prosecutor’s Offices: Bitola, Shtip, Gostivar and Skopje. The Skopje office operates within the jurisdiction of the Skopje Court of Appeal and oversees the work of prosecutors in Skopje, Veles, Kumanovo, Kavadarci, Gevgelija and Kriva Palanka. Its activities are formally supervised by the State Public Prosecutor.
On 16 December 2025, Ljupco Kocevski stepped down as State Public Prosecutor. Shortly before his resignation, however, he initiated an oversight inspection of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Skopje. The trigger, according to Kocevski, was mounting evidence of irregularities within the institution, which at the time was headed by high prosecutor Mustafa Hajrullahi.
“As State Public Prosecutor, I had the obligation — for the first time in more than four years — to supervise the work of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Skopje. I received information and Supreme Court rulings indicating possible unprofessional conduct by certain public prosecutors, as well as reports of threats, pressure and misconduct toward employees of the Prosecutor’s Office,” Kocevski stated on 21 October 2024.
What Kocevski did not explain was why the institution had operated for four years without any such oversight. For an office that holds decisive influence over some of the country’s most sensitive criminal cases, the absence of scrutiny raises a question that remains unanswered.
Extraordinary Oversight at HPPO Skopje Exposes Illegal Case Maneuvers
The oversight of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Skopje began on October 10, 2024, and was completed four days later. The oversight was conducted by three prosecutors assigned under the annual schedule for coordinating and monitoring the work of the Skopje Higher Prosecutor’s Office: Lile Stefanova from the former Special Public Prosecutor’s Office (SPO), Elvin Veli, and Dzelal Bajrami, a former minister from DUI.
They examined the work of the office for the period between January 1, 2023, and October 10, 2024. The oversight was carried out under the Rulebook on Determining the Manner of Supervising the Work and Conduct of Public Prosecutor’s Offices, specifically Article 6.
The three prosecutors examined how cases were received, how they were registered and assigned, and how they were subsequently handled.
Across prosecutor’s offices in Macedonia, case allocation is not computerized. The process is conducted manually and is regulated by the Rulebook on Internal Operations of Prosecutor’s Offices. In the Skopje Higher Prosecutor’s Office, cases are recorded in three registers citing “KOŽ, KOŽ1, and RO”.
The oversight found that Article 22 of the Rulebook on Internal Operations of Prosecutor’s Offices had not been respected. The provision clearly requires that a public prosecution officer confirm receipt of a submission with an official receipt stamp.
“In all controlled cases involving judgments and decisions received from the Skopje Court of Appeal, there is no receipt stamp, and the date of receipt is noted by hand,” states the oversight report on the work of the Skopje Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office, obtained by IRL.
The oversight also uncovered deficiencies in the registration and assigning of cases in the KOŽ and KOŽ1 registers. Under the rulebook, cases must be recorded on the same day they are received. If the volume of submissions makes this impossible, registration must take place the following day—before the new incoming mail begins to be logged.
Instead, inspectors found that cases remained unregistered for days. The report states that Articles 22, 30, and 35 of the Rulebook on Internal Operations of Prosecutor’s Offices were violated.
“Failure to comply with Articles 22, 30, and 35 of the Rulebook on Internal Operations of Public Prosecutor’s Offices creates the possibility for improper allocation of cases among public prosecutors,” the oversight document concludes.
One of the report’s most consequential findings concerns irregularities in case allocation. In several instances, the prescribed schedule for case allocation—set by the annual work plan—was not followed.
Under the established system, cases must be registered sequentially. Each high prosecutor is assigned a Roman numeral, and cases are assigned in strict order, from the lowest number to the highest. The system is designed to eliminate discretion and prevent manipulation. The oversight, however, found evidence that this order had been altered.
“In the area of case allocation, there are situations where the Roman numeral of the public prosecutor to whom the case was assigned is crossed out and replaced with the number of another public prosecutor, without any explanation in the remarks column,” the oversight document on the operations of the Skopje Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office states.
The Prosecutor Behind Roman Numeral II
Prosecutors in the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office Skopje, follow a formal rotation system for receiving cases. According to this schedule, cases are distributed sequentially through the administrative services responsible for registering and assigning them. Each high prosecutor is identified by a Roman numeral assigned for the current year — an internal designation that determines the order in which cases are allocated. Part of the oversight conducted in the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office Skopje focused precisely on this mechanism: how cases were registered and whether the procedures prescribed in the rulebook had been respected.
After the initial oversight identified shortcomings in the registration of cases, the then State Public Prosecutor, Ljupco Kocevski, instructed the prosecutors conducting the oversight to prepare an additional report. The aim was to conduct a more detailed examination of the work of the high prosecutors in Skopje and the decisions they had taken.
The additional review analyzed 39 cases from 2023 and 2024 in which high prosecutors had either withdrawn an appeal or abandoned an indictment. In 35 of those cases, the review found procedural deficiencies. In four cases, the findings indicated elements of a criminal offense in the actions of a high public prosecutor.
“During the oversight, it was determined that when withdrawing appeals or dropping charges in some cases, official notes and instructions were not prepared for the basic public prosecutors, and in some cases the high public prosecutor was not notified of the intention to withdraw the appeal,” the review concluded.
The purpose of this oversight was to determine whether high public prosecutors had acted lawfully, professionally, and competently when withdrawing appeals or charges. The four cases selected for additional scrutiny raised particular concern among members of the supervisory commission. All four had been assigned to the prosecutor identified by Roman numeral II — Jovan Cvetanovski — at the time the deputy head of the office led by Mustafa Hajrullahi. In each of these cases, Cvetanovski either withdrew the charges or abandoned the appeal.
Justice Obstructed
The four cases examined were: the long-running “Postal Bank” case; the construction of villas in the Skopje village of Zelenikovo by former television editor Dragan Pavlovik-Latas and his two brothers, known as the “Trevnik” case; the “Serta” case concerning tenders for cleaning government institutions; and another seemingly routine case involving the serving of alcohol to a minor in Negotino.
In all of them, the proceedings before the Skopje Court of Appeal were represented by the same prosecutor — Jovan Cvetanovski, the prosecutor behind Roman numeral II. These cases were precisely the ones singled out for additional examination on November 18 and 19, 2024.
Hajrullahi and Cvetanovski: “We are being Targeted to Silence the SPO Bonus Scandal”
When IRL confronted the former head of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office Skopje, Mustafa Hajrullahi, with details from the oversight report and statements from five female employees who alleged he pressured them to register cases contrary to the Rulebook, he rejected both the findings and the accusations. Hajrullahi denied abusing his position or directing which prosecutor should receive specific cases.
“If there had been such abuse, Kocevski would have taken other measures. This is only being used as a cover to remove me from that prosecutor’s office and to sweep away all the other cases from the former SPO. Tell me, you follow all the events—did all this happen because of the bonuses in the SPO?” Hajrullahi told IRL.
Hajrullahi also questioned the composition of the oversight team itself. In particular, he objected to the participation of prosecutor Lile Stefanova, who had represented the “Postal Bank” case during her time in the former Special Public Prosecutor’s Office. According to Hajrullahi, this meant she effectively supervised a case in which she had previously been involved. However, the oversight of the “Postal Bank” case examined only the actions of prosecutor Jovan Cvetanovski—specifically whether he acted professionally and lawfully when he withdrew the appeal. The oversight did not reassess the evidence or testimony in the case, which are matters for the court.
“Lile Stefanova acted in the first instance in the ‘Postal Bank’ case. And the same prosecutor comes to supervise the same case—her own work. Tell me, is that normal?” Hajrullahi told IRL. He added that, according to his belief, only the prosecutor Dzhelal Bajrami—also a member of the oversight team in the HPPO Skopje—had credibility.
Asked how the cases “Postal Bank,” “Trevnik,” “Serta,” and the case involving serving alcohol to a minor were all registered under Roman numeral II, meaning they were allocated to prosecutor Jovan Cvetanovski, Hajrullahi said he had the authority under the Rulebook—specifically Article 35—to allocate cases to prosecutors. However, he insisted that he could not influence their decisions, whether he would drop the appeal or withdraw from the indictment as in the four specific cases, once a case had been assigned.
“How could I tell Jovan Cvetanovski what decision to make?” Hajrullahi questioned.
In a written response to IRL, prosecutor Jovan Cvetanovski stated that the allocation of cases is governed by the Rulebook on Internal Operations in Prosecutor’s Offices and carried out by administrative services, which register the cases and assign them to prosecutors.
“The way the services registered them and according to what principles, I do not know, nor was that within my competence,” Cvetanovski wrote.
As Hajrullahi’s deputy, he said he had never heard of civil servants in the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office Skopje complaining about pressure from their superior regarding the allocation of cases.
“For nine years as a prosecutor in the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office Skopje, I did not observe any deviant behavior among the employees or between the employees and Mustafa Hajrullahi. On the contrary, throughout the entire period I witnessed professional interpersonal relations, particularly between them,” Cvetanovski added.
He claims that no cases were steered to him and that every decision he made was independent and autonomous.
“I state responsibly that no one steered cases to me, because there would have been no motive to do so, and I also claim responsibly that, as in hundreds of other cases, I acted lawfully in these proceedings. As a high public prosecutor, I analyzed the cases from all aspects, which is my competence, and I made decisions that I stand behind—now and in the future,” Cvetanovski said.
In his detailed response to IRL, Cvetanovski also pointed to what he described as the root of the tensions inside the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office Skopje: the case concerning bonuses in the former Special Public Prosecutor’s Office, on which he had worked. Like Hajrullahi, he argued that Lile Stefanova should not have been involved in supervising the “Postal Bank” case because of her previous role in the SPO.
“By deliberately assembling a working group that includes Lile Stefanova—who has a conflict of interest because she is part of the SPO bonus cases—she is effectively supervising her own case. Using her current position, with an insidious and unlawful approach to her work, she intervenes and through alleged oversight attempts to present my work as illegal, which would ultimately lead to a challenge to my decision regarding the SPO bonuses,” Cvetanovski wrote.
Both Mustafa Hajrullahi and Jovan Cvetanovski maintain that the extraordinary oversight at the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office Skopje—where they served as head and deputy head—was triggered by their decision to resolve the case involving bonuses in the former SPO through a prosecutorial decision, rather than closing it as the Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Organized Crime and Corruption had done on two previous occasions.
