Kole Shterjev doesn’t care what the SCPC thinks

A few minutes after the State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption ( SCPS) sent a decree to the Assembly that the prime minister cannot be the finance minister at the same time, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev took the floor at the legislature and announced that he was withdrawing from the ministerial post.
“I gave the cabinet an order to issue a motion for withdrawal of my nomination for the  ministerial post. When there’s dilemma and an open debate, we should also listen to the opposition, and the Anti-Corruption that has sent a message. I will head the ministry until a new finance minister is elected,” Zaev said from the Parliament rostrum.
Although he withdrew, Zaev will still be the head of the ministry and virtually his decision will not change anything in his original intention, being both prime minister and finance minister. He only sent a message that he respected the position of the Anti-Corruption Commission, which said that if the prime minister becomes a minister, members will have to investigate conflicts of interest with the prime minister. And while the Prime Minister complied with the Anti-Corruption Commission, the chairman of the Council of Public Prosecutors, Kole Shterjev, sent out a message saying that he was not interested in the commission’s opinion, that he would not pay the penalty for the conflict of interests that has been determined.
Shterjev remained unavailable for comments on the prime minister’s move. Last week, in a statement to the media, he said that it hasn’t even crossed his mind to pay for the penalty.
“It was indicative that according to the Parliament’s Speaker’s brother-in-law it was not a close family relation, and this was the first degree of more distant relatives. I did not pay the fine. It doesn’t even cross my mind. When the court decides, then I will think about it”, Shterjev said.
On April 24, the State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption conducted a misdemeanor procedure against Shterjev, because it confirmed a conflict of interests in this case and fined the President of the Council 500 euros.
According to the Anti-Corruption Commission, despite the fact that at the session of the selection of seven public prosecutors, the Council President stated in the minutes that if the Council worked in full composition, it would be exempt from the session and would leave it because the candidate is in a close relative, he still attended and voted restrained for the election of Gjorgjeva. The Council has 11 members, and making a decision requires two thirds, that is, eight members, as they voted in total.

The President of the Anti-Corruption Commission, Biljana Ivanovska, says that their procedure for Shterjev has been completed and now the case should be processed in court.
“As a person coming from this line of work, he sent a very bad message to the public. It should be an example of how people in the justice system should behave.
By behaving this way, he shows his lack of integrity, his lack of ethics, and his lack of professionalism. Either way, it is a very bad message,” says Ivanovska.
Shterjev rarely gives public statements and has barely any communication with the media. The institution under his control was also criticized in the European Commission’s Transparency Report.

(FFS)