Senior prosecutor's office in Bitola searched: unofficially, the trail leads to Markovski's passport

Last night in Prilep, police detained a prosecutor from the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Bitola. Official confirmation soon followed: the Public Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime and Corruption had obtained court warrants to search his home and his office at the Bitola prosecutor's office.

The suspicion is a heavy one for a man whose job is prosecuting crime: accepting a reward for unlawful influence, a criminal offence under Article 359 of the Criminal Code. The searches are being carried out by interior ministry officers, and the prosecution said it would release more details once the operation is over.

No name has been given officially. Unofficially, the case is linked to the return of businessman Borche Markovski's passport. It's not an unfamiliar name. Markovski is the first defendant in a case over abuses involving a tender worth more than 1.7 million euros at REK Bitola, the state power plant. He was released from detention on a guarantee of more than 5 million euros, and then a court in Struga gave him his passport back. He then left for Serbia, and in August his defence said he had travelled on business and returned to Bitola.

Whether the link between the arrest and the passport is confirmed, the proceedings will show. But the picture is uncomfortable even without confirmation: prosecutors with a court warrant walking into a prosecutor's office. An institution meant to guard the law is now searching its own backyard.

There is another side to it. If the anti-corruption prosecutors really are going after their own colleagues, that's news rarely heard in the Balkans. The question is whether the case will make it to court and to a verdict, or stay at the press-release stage. And one more: how does anyone decide to hand back the passport of a defendant released on a five-million-euro guarantee in the first place?