Grubi calls the entire government as witnesses, while 9.7 million euros' worth of machines sit in a warehouse

The "State Lottery" trial was supposed to be a fast procedure - this is an indictment motion, not a full-blown indictment. Instead, after three postponements because both prosecutors were away at training, yesterday's hearing fell through yet again: the prosecution's third witness simply did not turn up in court.

While the prosecution waits for its witnesses, the second defendant, Artan Grubi, has drawn up a list of his own. And not just any list. The former deputy prime minister has proposed as witnesses in his defence every minister who sat at the government session of 6 June 2023 - a session he chaired, and at which the decision was taken to buy video lottery terminals worth 9.7 million euros.

The list reads like a who's who of the SDSM, DUI and coalition partners of the day - Bojan Maričić, Fatmir Bytyqi, Slavica Grkovska, Bujar Osmani, Fatmir Besimi, Krenar Loga, Fatmir Bekim Sali, Azir Aliu, Kaja Shukova, Jovana Trenčevska, Blagoj Bočvarski, Bisera Kostadinovska-Stojčevska, Jeton Shaqiri, Kreshnik Bekteshi and Risto Penov, plus the deputy ministers of interior, defence and agriculture. The only names missing are those who were not at the session: then prime minister Dimitar Kovačevski and ministers Slavjanka Petrovska, Oliver Spasovski and Ljupčo Nikolovski, whose deputies sat in for them. The message is clear: if Grubi is guilty, so is the whole government that raised its hand.

The witness who "turned"

The prosecution has a problem of its own. The first witness it called, instead of backing the prosecution's case, testified in favour of the defence and was declared hostile. Prosecutors Daniel Kocev and Aleksandar Davčevski are now looking into whether someone got to him. "For reasons known only to him, he decided to change the statement he had previously given to the prosecution," Kocev said. The same man is already the subject of a pre-investigation procedure following a complaint by the Interior Ministry, in which he has the status of a suspect.

The prosecutors insist they are not losing control, because the case rests on material evidence, not on words. Maybe. But when a key witness changes his story somewhere between the prosecutor's office and the courtroom, the question is not just what the next one will say - it is whether someone is already working on what the next one will say.

The machines sit idle, the damage stays

Perhaps the most powerful image of the whole trial came at the previous hearing. A department head at the Lottery, a member of the procurement committee, confirmed that the VLT machines are still sitting in the company's warehouses - unused. Nine million seven hundred thousand euros, on a shelf in a storeroom.

According to the indictment motion, the Lottery had no right to run electronic games of chance on its own in the first place. Back in 2013 it handed that right over as a non-cash contribution worth 6,244,898 euros to a joint company with "Casinos Austria", in exchange for a 51 percent stake. Even so, in 2023 a proposal for the Lottery to run the games itself landed at a government session as an addition to the agenda, and Grubi, according to the prosecution, proposed that it be adopted even though the decision was not within the government's competence.

The first defendant, former director Perparim Bajrami, surrendered at the Blace border crossing after more than a year on the run with an international arrest warrant out for him, and is now in Šuto Orizari prison. Grubi left house arrest a week ago. All the defendants in the case are charged with abuse of office, a crime that carries one to five years in prison.

The question that remains: if the ministers do come to court, will they say they didn't know what they were voting for - or that they did?