Financial Police file criminal charges against supervising engineers and companies, suspected of unlawfully obtaining over 50 million denars

The Financial Police Directorate has filed criminal charges with the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Organized Crime and Corruption, as well as with the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office Skopje, against five individuals and two legal entities.

According to the statement, those charged are B.G. and G.F. in their capacity as supervising engineers, while E.N., M.G. and N.M. are named as owners and managers of the two legal entities, together with the legal entities themselves. They are charged with the criminal offenses of “Abuse of official position and authority” under Article 353 of the Criminal Code of North Macedonia, “Forgery or destruction of business books” under Article 280, “Fraud to the detriment of European Union funds – attempted” under Article 249-a, and “Use of a document with false content” under Article 380 of the Criminal Code.

The Financial Police emphasize that the reported persons, in their role as supervising engineers, acted contrary to legal provisions by exceeding their official powers. They carried out technical inspections of the buildings and prepared final reports with false content, contrary to Article 33 and Article 90, paragraph 3 of the Construction Law.

Through these actions, the legal entities were enabled to register unfinished buildings with the Agency for Real Estate Cadastre and secure unlawful financial gain.

Likewise, the owners and managers of the legal entities, although aware that the buildings had not been completed and did not meet the legal conditions for being put into use, used the final reports containing false content as the basis for their registration in the public records of the Agency for Real Estate Cadastre.

According to the criminal complaint, the aim was to create a false impression that the conditions for use had been met, in order to enable the payment of financial support approved under the Rural Development Programme within the European Union’s Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA 3 – IPARD 2021–2027), by attempting to unlawfully obtain a total of 50,141,528 denars.