Over the years, several prosecutors and judges were involved in the case, but the first one, Gjoko Ristov, himself recently ended up under house arrest.
After 18 years through the court labyrinths, the “Izgrev” case will finally have an end — a final acquittal for the accused. At the public session in Appeal, on Wednesday, the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office requested that the appeal against the first-degree acquittal, which was submitted by the Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Organized Crime and Corruption (OJO GOKK), be rejected.Focus“.
– This means that “Izgrev” is over, we are only waiting for a written confirmation of the decision of the Criminal Court, which was an acquittal, says Gjorgi Miladinov, one of the defendants.
The case was opened at the end of 2008, and the Miladinov brothers, who had a joint company with MOC, were accused of financial malpractice with the “Izgrev” hotel in Struga, money laundering, credit fraud and providing false information. Several lawyers, judges and notaries were charged with aiding and abetting. First-instance verdicts with prison sentences were handed down, which were overturned before the Court of Appeal, “Focus” reminds.
Over the years, several prosecutors and judges were involved in the case, but the first one, Gjoko Ristov, himself recently ended up under house arrest. He claimed that money was laundered in the “Izgrev” case, and he himself is now accused of the same crime, after in the family house 350,000 euros were found walled up in his kitchen.
Recently, the judge Daniela Dimovska explained the acquittal verdict, in which the main conclusion is that the defendants could not be prosecuted for the crime of “money laundering”, because the money came from a bank loan, that is, it was about legal funds.
“The length of the procedure creates unnecessary legal uncertainty for the defendants and violates the principle of economy and rationality of the judicial procedure. Namely, this procedure only before the courts lasts 16 years, that is, from 2009 to 2025, it is conducted according to a procedural law according to which there is no limit to the number of times the first instance will be canceled by the higher court and the return of the procedure to the beginning, but, however, this must not create legal uncertainty for the defendants for such a long period,” the judgment states.
The Miladinov brothers and the defendant Dimitrija Golaboski spent more than 21 months in custody, and a decade ago, the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that the defendants were illegally held in custody while they were being tried, for which the state was ordered to pay them compensation of 3,000 euros and 1,350 euros for court costs, reports “Focus”.
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