After a full year of investigation, the Basic Public Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime and Corruption has discontinued proceedings against businessmen Ratko Kapuševski and Asmir Jahoski, former ESM director Vasko Kovačevski, and a dozen others. The subject of the investigation - the procurement of fuel oil for TEC Negotino worth over 160 million euros.

According to the prosecution's statement, „the gathered evidence did not establish that the suspects committed the criminal offences for which they were under investigation". Simply put, there is no evidence. And so - for something that was written about for a year as one of the largest financial operations at the state level - the order is now that there is no case.

The prosecution lists the conclusions. The procurement was carried out „transparently" under conditions of an energy crisis. The fuel oil arrived on time and without interruption. ESM and the state budget „suffered no damage". The financial transactions were not money laundering - but „legitimate business activity". The amended terms were approved by „the appropriate management bodies" of ESM.

The question that follows - if a year of investigation produced „extensive documentation, financial records, expert assessments and testimony from ESM, TEC and fuel-trader officials" - and all of that showed not a single law was broken - why was the investigation opened in the first place? Who initiated it? What did the original complaint say?

Former director Kovačevski, who once ran the largest public energy procurements in the country, is again clean. The businessmen who took the contracts - also. Macedonia will pay another bill - not for fuel oil, but for court proceedings closed without an indictment.

How many cases in Macedonia over the last 10 years end this way? An investigation that ran for months, press conferences, names in headlines - and then: „no evidence". This is a pattern no politician wants to comment on, because „judicial independence" is the term that hides everything - accountability, and the lack of it.