Over 11.5 million euros. That's what one guarantee from a bankrupt bank, which no one checked in time, costs the budget. The Financial Police filed a criminal complaint against a foreign national and his company over a project in Kičevo that ended up a textbook example of how easily state controls are breached.

The scheme is shamefully simple. The firm, in a public tender, submitted a bank guarantee from the Azerbaijani "Muganbank" - but kept quiet that the bank had already entered bankruptcy proceedings. The guarantee, in other words, was already worthless at the moment it was submitted. No one on the other side noticed in time.

The price of that oversight is twofold. 9,474,132 euros of European IPA funds were lost, earmarked for rehabilitating and expanding the sewage network in Kičevo - money the state now has to cover from its own budget. Added to this is 127,425,036 denars of direct damage to the budget, or about two million euros. On top of that, the contractor hired subcontractors without permission from the Ministry of Finance, against the terms of the contract signed in 2023.

The criminal complaint is for abuse of the public procurement procedure, and the case is with the Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Skopje. But the question hanging over the whole story isn't whether the foreigner will answer for it - it's who, on the domestic side, signed off, checked and approved a guarantee from a collapsing bank. Because fraud always takes two: one who lies and one who won't look.

And European money isn't infinite. Every lost IPA euro is a euro that won't come back, and the bill, as usual, is paid by the citizen - not the one who signed.