The prosecution has increased the damage the defendants are charged with in the State Lottery case - from 507,623,173 denars, or around 8.2 million euros, to around 596,125,511 denars, or around 9.7 million euros. The change came out of a forensic assessment. That is one and a half million euros more than the previous version of the indictment stated.

Before the Basic Criminal Court in Skopje, former first deputy prime minister and senior ex-official of the DUI party Artan Grubi, brought in under police escort from house arrest, answered the question of whether he felt guilty with a single word: "No." The same plea came from former government secretary general Metodija Dimovski and from four members of the State Lottery supervisory board.

The hearing collapsed over translation

The eighth defendant, Bashkim Avdi, did not enter a plea at all - he said he had not received the indictment and the evidence in Albanian and does not understand what he is charged with. Judge Biljana Šuplinovska-Joveski had no option but to postpone the main hearing.

The right to use one's mother tongue in court proceedings is indisputable and nobody in the courtroom disputed it. What the judge asked was why the request is coming only now. At the previous hearing, on 24 August, all legal instructions were given to Avdi in Albanian through a court interpreter. His lawyer Asmir Alispaić has been engaged since that same date. Prosecutor Aleksandar Davčevski said the defendant is abusing an indisputable right, particularly as this is a detention case.

Both sides are right about different things, and that is the point. The right exists. The moment at which it is invoked postpones the trial. When those two things coincide in a detention case, the court is left without options.

From embezzlement to abuse of office

What is mentioned least, and means most, is the change of legal qualification. The investigation began in December 2024 on suspicion of embezzlement in office. With the indictment, the charge became abuse of official position and authority.

The difference is not technical. For embezzlement in office with substantial gain obtained, the Criminal Code prescribes a minimum of four up to twenty years in prison. For abuse of official position - one to five.

Public prosecutor Daniel Kocev explained it openly: "The qualification was changed because we did not secure evidence with which we would manage to prove the offence of embezzlement." And he added a sentence worth holding on to: "Now we have a problem because the sentence is smaller. However, nobody gives us as public prosecutors the right to file indictments depending on what sentence is prescribed."

That is a principled answer. The question that remains is why, after almost two years of investigation, the evidence for the more serious offence was never secured.

House arrest and a classified report

Grubi turned up at the Blace border crossing after more than a year on the run and, instead of detention, ended up under house arrest. Kocev explained that the prosecution received information from the interior ministry, containing intelligence findings that his safety was under threat, classified and declassified solely for the purposes of the proceedings.

"This is not, as was reported in public, information that it was not safe in Šutka for Artan Grubi - this is a very complex piece of information containing data going two years back," the prosecutor said.

The first defendant, Prparim Bajrami, is not in the courtroom - he is still on the run, an international arrest warrant has been issued and the court ruled that he will be tried in absentia.

According to the indictment, during 2023 and 2024 the defendants exceeded the limits of their official authority in the unlawful procurement of video lottery terminals, although they knew that the State Lottery company had no right to organise electronic games of chance on its own. The defence claims the indictment is groundless. Lawyer Goce Risteski says they are firmly convinced of their client's innocence.

The trial continues. Until then, the most concrete thing to come out of this courtroom is that the sum grew by one and a half million euros, while the possible sentence shrank to a quarter.