Eurasia Press & News
A change in government in Hungary could spell the end of a comfortable exile for North Macedonia’s fugitive ex-prime minister, but extraditing Nikola Gruevski would take more than political will alone.
Afugitive from justice in his home country of North Macedonia, and a political asylum seeker in Hungary under the protection of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban: for the past three years, that’s been the life of former authoritarian prime minister Nikola Gruevski, who fled a jail sentence in North Macedonia in 2018.
But with the recent emergence of Peter Marki-Zay, the conservative mayor of the southern city of Hodmezovasarhely, as the de-facto leader of Hungary’s joint opposition, and the person regarded as having the best chance of finally defeating Hungary’s long-serving prime minister at next year’s general election, slated for April 2022, the political climate for Gruevski could soon change for the worse.
“We will expel the criminal migrants brought in by Fidesz [Orban’s party]. We will extradite Nikola Gruevski of Macedonia, Zaid Naffa of Jordan and other criminal migrants settled [in Hungary] by Fidesz,” Marki-Zay recently promised in a Facebook post.
But revoking Gruevski’s asylum status in Hungary and then extraditing him would require far more than political will, legal experts tell BIRN. Rather, it would be a much more complicated and lengthy legal process.
All of this while back in Gruevski’s home country, things are in flux as well. Gruevski’s conservative VMRO DPMNE party, which under his rule was widely accused of “capturing the state institutions” including the judiciary, is now in a serious position to take on the pro-European Social Democratic leader Zoran Zaev, who toppled Gruevski back in 2017.
With this prospect in mind, and with the largely unreformed and unapologetic VMRO DPMNE now run by Gruevski’s former party secretary general, there are few guarantees that the country won’t stray from the path of prosecuting the wrongdoings of the past.
Expelling Gruevski won’t be easy
“In a democratic country based on the rule of law, no government or prime minister has the right to strip someone of their refugee status,” Andras Lederer, senior advocacy officer of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog, told BIRN.
Even so, there remain legal avenues to do so.
As standard procedure, Hungary’s migration authority – which now bears the somewhat threatening name of the National Directorate-General for Aliens Policing in Hungary – periodically carries out a regular review of a person’s refugee status every three years.
“It is practically like a new asylum procedure, where the applicant has to prove that the conditions which justified the asylum still prevail. Based on the evidence, the authority can decide to revoke or prolong their status,” Lederer explained.
Gruevski, whose VMRO DPMNE ran the country from 2006 to 2016, fled to Hungary almost exactly three years ago, in November 2018, to avoid serving a two-year jail sentence for the illicit purchase of a luxury limousine.
He was granted asylum in Hungary in a fast-track procedure the same month, in a case that was seen by many critics as highly controversial and a personal goodwill gesture by Orban for his political ally.
Back in 2018, BIRN was able to reveal that Gruevski’s movie-like escape from North Macedonia and his transit via three Balkan countries before reaching Hungary was facilitated by Hungarian diplomats.
Gruevski arrived in Hungary either on November 11 or 12, 2018, and on November 13, he wrote on Facebook that he was requesting asylum, insisting he was a victim of politically motivated proceedings in his country.
He had an ace up his sleeve, though – an opinion from North Macedonia’s Anti-Discrimination Commission obtained shortly before he fled, which claimed he had been discriminated against and would be unable to get a fair trial back in his country. The quirk was that this Anti-Discrimination Commission was elected back in the time when Gruevski’s party was still firmly in power and led by a strong supporter of Gruevski’s, Aleksandar Dastevski.
His asylum application was approved in less than ten days. On November 20, 2018, he announced proudly on his Facebook page that: “the Hungarian Republic, a member of the EU and NATO, granted him asylum”.
NGOs like the Hungarian Helsinki Committee were surprised by the rapid approval of the asylum claim, pointing out that Hungary’s Immigration Authority normally takes 60 days to decide on such claims and, in most of the cases, they are rejected. In 2018, Hungary granted asylum to just 68 persons and refused 595 applications.
But even if Gruevski’s status in Hungary is eventually revoked, Gruevski could still appeal the decision in a Hungarian court. The extradition process could only be launched as a further step.
The Metropolitan Court of Hungary has already rejected a North Macedonia request for Gruevski’s extradition, claiming in 2019 that “a person recognised as a refugee cannot be extradited to the state from where he fled.”
“In a new process, if there is a new extradition request from North Macedonia and if Gruevski is no longer recognised as a refugee, he could be extradited. But a Hungarian court has to ascertain whether he has the right to a fair trial in his home country,” Lederer explained to BIRN, adding that the whole process could take months, if not years.
From undisputed leader to fugitive from justice
Back in 2015, Gruevski’s position, who by then had already been in power for nine years, seemed unassailable. His populist policies of playing the defiant nationalist card in the country’s name dispute with Greece, while erecting huge monuments in Skopje, part of his masterplan for a revamp of the capital dubbed Skopje 2014, had brought him unparalleled popular support.
All of this started to crumble at the start of that year, however, when the Social Democratic opposition leader Zoran Zaev started releasing batches of leaked illegally taped telephone conversations of then top-ranking officials in Gruevski’s government, which appeared to show many alleged wrongdoings.
This plunged the country into a two years-long political crisis, during which Gruevski tried to cling on to power. But under the weight of the revelations contained in the wiretaps, he swiftly lost ground both at home as well as from the Western powers, who got involved in facilitating the crisis.
Revelations about rigging elections, fixing the appointment of judges and influencing courts, fixing tendering procedures, and conducting lucrative business deals were just some of the exposés that tipped the scales.
In 2016, an EU-commissioned report painted the system Gruevski was leading as “State Capture” – a deeply undemocratic and corrupt society where practically all the country’s institutions were controlled by his party. The EU recommended a set of urgent reform priorities and an early general election.
The leaked wiretaps were eventually handed over to the newly formed EU- and US-backed Special Prosecution body in Skopje, and in 2016, even with VMRO DPMNE still clinging on to power, the first investigations over the alleged wrongdoings contained in those wiretaps were launched, even against Gruevski himself.
Standing on thin ice, threatened by mounting criminal investigations and court cases against him, and faced with the prospect of going to jail, Gruevski fled to Hungary a year later.
With Gruevski enjoying asylum in Hungary, earlier this year the Skopje Criminal Court handed down a legal conclusion on the entire wiretapping affair, when it jailed for 12 years the once all-powerful former head of the secret police and Gruevski’s cousin, Saso Mijalkov, for masterminding the mass illegal wiretapping of thousands of people between 2008 and 2015.
Political earthquake in North Macedonia could tempt Gruevski home
Although some media like Hungarian news site 24.hu have speculated that in the event his status in Hungary is revoked, Gruevski could decide to move to Turkey or Russia, given the current political turmoil in North Macedonia, he could instead be tempted to return home, where his party, after just four years in opposition, is eyeing a chance to regain power.
This situation came about after Gruevski’s bitter political opponent, Prime Minister Zaev, announced on October 30 his resignation from both the post of premier and from the helm of his party, following poor results in local elections.
This unexpected political earthquake plunged the current government into uncharted waters, and VMRO DPMNE last week claimed it had cobbled together a new majority in parliament.
The opposition-instigated no-confidence vote against Zaev’s government is slated for Thursday, after which it should be clearer who, if anyone, holds a majority, or whether snap elections will be the way forward.
All of this will come as good news to Gruevski, though he will still nonetheless have to consider carefully whether he should come back.
“Strictly legally speaking, if Gruevski decides to return, there will be no two ways about it, as he would have to be immediately apprehended and sent to serve his two-year jail term,” a high-ranking source in North Macedonia’s Justice Ministry told BIRN.
This is because prior to fleeing in 2018, he had used up all of the legal remedies at his disposal to object to his sentence, including a rejected appeal before the higher instance Appeals Court in Skopje.
“We have never given up from seeking extradition for Gruevski, and we will never do so,” the source said.
Furthermore, Gruevski is not only facing a jail sentence, but has several other cases to worry about.
The Skopje Criminal Court, in a first-instance verdict in September 2020, found Gruevski guilty in another case, of inciting a mob attack on an opposition-run municipality in 2013, for which he received another year-and-a-half jail sentence.
And in October 2020, Gruevski was named the prime suspect in another corruption investigation, in which he is suspected of money-laundering and the illicit purchase of building lots in a prestigious Skopje suburb.
Meanwhile, the prosecution’s probes regarding the alleged illegal financing of his party during his time at the helm, as well as several others remain open.
During all this time, Gruevski, as well as his VMRO DPMNE party, now led by his former party secretary general Hristijan Mickoski, have insisted that these and other court cases against former top-ranking officials are politically motivated.
With Gruevski’s long history of interfering in the workings of the courts, fears are now growing that if his party returns to power, it could spell the end of the country’s attempts to reform the judicial system and end impunity.
And although in 2020, the new party leadership under Micksoki stripped Gruevski’s title as honorary president, in a subtle attempt to distance VMRO DPMNE from Gruevski’s legacy, the party has never really acknowledged nor apologised for the authoritarian governments that it headed during his time in office.
In response to Social Democratic accusations that if VMRO DPMNE returns to power, it would signal the return of de-facto leader Gruevski, an unnamed source close to the party’s presidency told BIRN that: “this claim is just scaremongering against our party, because the entire image of VMRO DPMNE being undemocratic and corrupt was actually falsely painted by the Social Democrats” in the first place.
“We held democratic elections for a new leader and [Hristijan] Mickoski is now it, de facto and de jure. It is high time to put an end to this deliberate spinning that the spectre of Gruevski is running the party from the shadows,” the source insisted.
Asked directly whether VMRO DPMNE would seek the annulment or revisiting of the cases against Gruevski and other former members should they return to power, the source stuck to the party line that: “we have witnessed a lot of politically motivated cases in the past few years, so there is certainly a need for true reforms of the judiciary.”
Nevertheless, he insisted that his party cannot and does not want to influence the country’s judicial system, but rather just facilitate an atmosphere in which it can operate independently.
