Nearly 11 million denars in penalty interest: criminal complaint against Jani Makraduli over unsigned payment orders at the Post

In state-owned companies, damage doesn't have to look like theft. Sometimes one missing signature is enough. The Financial Police Office has filed a criminal complaint with the Skopje Basic Public Prosecutor's Office against Jani Makraduli, former general director and chairman of the management board of the state postal company "Pošta", for abuse of office and authority.

According to the complaint, in 2021 and 2022 he acted against the company's statute and the Company Law by failing to carry out his own management board's decisions to pay off a debt to two firms, totalling 19,292,984 denars, or around 314,000 euros. The payment documents were delivered to him. He did not sign the debt settlement agreement, he did not confirm the invoices, and he did not sign the payment orders.

The consequence is predictable to anyone who has ever paid a bill late. Court proceedings were launched against the Post, and the rulings awarded penalty interest against it. The damage to the state company, according to the Financial Police, amounts to 10,968,483 denars, almost 178,000 euros. That is equal to almost 57 percent of the debt itself - money spent on nothing but waiting.

Makraduli ran the Post from 2020 to 2022, and before that spent many years as an MP and deputy speaker of Parliament. A criminal complaint is not a verdict, and he has the right to defend himself before the prosecution and the court. But the question is bigger than one person: how many more state companies are paying interest because someone at the top didn't want to, or didn't get around to, signing?

The penalty interest is not paid by the director. It is paid by a state-owned company, which means all of us. It remains to be seen whether this complaint will reach a courtroom, or end up as just another number in the prosecution's annual report.