Eight tonnes of marijuana. That is the investigators' rough estimate of how much crossed the Macedonian-Serbian border in the space of a year, packed in among pillows, duvets, bed linen, small cakes, rolls and cake bases. Not once. At least four times in 2025 alone, following the same scheme, with different packaging each time.

Now two suspects have been sentenced under a plea deal with the Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime and Corruption - three years and six months for one, three years and eight months for the other. Both waived the right to appeal, so the verdicts became final the moment they were handed down. The prosecution published the anonymised judgments, explaining that there were no technical conditions for them to appear on the sud.mk portal. So publishing one document on the official court portal is complicated enough, but shipping tonnes of drugs across a state border was not.

The company that had a licence

At one end of the chain sits a Skopje company with a perfectly valid licence to grow and process cannabis for medical purposes. In November 2025 it bought 8,832 kilograms of dried cannabis flower from a firm in Strumica. For almost two weeks workers packed it into double vacuum bags of one kilogram each, ten to a cardboard box - more than 200 boxes. When the packing was done, the staff were sent on collective leave.

Then the lorry set off. On 13 January the boxes were taken to a location near Sveti Nikole, where a freight vehicle was waiting with legally cleared goods and a customs seal. The seal was opened, part of the legal cargo removed, and the boxes went in its place. The vehicle continued to the border and crossed shortly before midnight.

The question the verdict does not answer

How was the customs seal removed and put back? The court documents are silent. It is not known whether it was replaced with an identical one or whether someone further along the chain helped. During the journey through Serbia the GPS system was switched off on several occasions. That is not a detail that happens by accident.

Two days later, near Kovilj, the lorry's trailer caught fire. According to the court findings, the fire was set deliberately - to destroy evidence and explain the disappearance of the legal cargo that customs paperwork said should have been inside. On 24 January, 97.9 kilograms of marijuana were found in Belgrade. On 29 January, in a house and warehouses near Kruševac, another 4,911 kilograms. During the search of the company's Skopje premises, which began on 31 January, 9,635 kilograms of dried flower and containers of unrefined cannabis oil extract were seized.

Border checks that showed nothing

The most interesting part of the whole story is how obvious the signals were. In one case a lorry left Macedonia declared as empty and came back more than 1.2 tonnes lighter. In another, a freight vehicle carrying food products was weighed on the way out at around 640 kilograms more than at customs clearance. The next consignments were declared as pillows and duvets - and again there were weight discrepancies, and again stops at the same locations in Serbia.

The weight difference was measured. The record exists. The chain kept running for months anyway.

From the available judgment it is impossible to tell whether the investigation covered possible help from people inside the customs service or involvement by anyone in the state apparatus. In Serbia, charges were brought against six people in July. In Macedonia the investigation has been widened by another seven suspects, bringing the number of people linked to the case to 13. Some of the suspects are on the run.

Two men will serve three-and-a-bit years each. Eight tonnes got through. Who let them through - nobody is asking that out loud yet.