Skopje, 20 July 2024 (MIA) — The State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption has quoted Article 11 of the Law on Travel Documents in an announcement published on its website dismissing public reactions to its chair Tatjana Dimitrovska receiving a diplomatic passport and commission members applying for theirs.

Following a TV appearance in which Dimitrovska commented on the issue, the anticorruption commission's website said Saturday that "according to the law, the diplomatic passport is not a privilege, but only a right that serves the anticorruption members in performing their official duties and that right will never be used for private purposes."

"So there are no dilemmas in the public and for the sake of ultimate transparency, we urge the new foreign minister and members of Parliament to review the decision on the issuance of diplomatic passports to the anticorruption commission," the announcement says.

Pointing out that the new anticorruption commission members were "top professionals elected by Parliament with a consensus from all political parties," the announcement also dismisses rumors that members had requested new vehicles for each of them.

This is "complete misinformation," the announcement says, adding that "no request has ever been sent to any state institution for the allocation of official vehicles to anticorruption commission members, including chair Dimitrovska."

"The State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption has not requested any financial resources for procuring vehicles as part of the national budget revision. As an institution, the commission needs official vehicles and will seek an appropriate solution for this," it continues.

"We believe that riding bicycles or going to work by bus is pure populism, which does not justify the number of unclosed cases from the previous anticorruption commission," the announcement says.

In addition, the new anticorruption commission claims that their predecessors, during their entire term in office, had succeeded in the Public Prosecutor's Office accepting "an extremely small number of initiatives for starting criminal prosecution procedures."

Although their predecessors had blamed the PPO's inefficiency for this, the new anticorruption commission says "perhaps we should seek the reasons for this in their insufficient arguments and their initiatives' superficiality."

The new State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption consists of Tatjana Dimitrovska as chair and Cveta Ristovska, Sofija Spasova Medarska, Besnik Xhemaili, Biljana Karakashova Shulev, Servet Demiri, and Zoran Bogoevski as members. Their term in office started on Feb. 8, 2024.

Since then, their announcement says, they have closed 21 cases regarding ​​conflicts of interest, 61 cases of ​​corruption prevention, and 107 cases regarding monitoring assets. mr/