About 6 months ago the portal Infomax posted news whose title consisted of a claim and a question at the same time. The author of the text in one part claims, while in another part states that the news is according to unofficial information, that Filip Medarski and David Stevenson used connections and influence towards judges and prosecutors for extorting racket from persons who were under investigation by the Special Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The text states that the portal has exclusively found out this information, and has not submitted any official statements, evidence or anything, to be able to confirm it. The information is random and based on pure guessing.
Namely, the portal makes indirect accusations that the lawyer Medarski and the former diplomat of the US Embassy in Skopje, Stevenson, opened a consulting company for money laundering that were allegedly extorted by various businessmen and politicians who were under investigation of the SPP. The speculation goes so far that the author writes that both of them were representing themselves as the former US Ambassador Jess Baily. According to the author, Republic of North Macedonia officially became the only state in which a foreign citizen opens a company, which is not true. And even if it was so, there is nothing controversial about it because this is permitted by the law.
It is quite obvious that the letter sent to the Criminal Court by the then-Ambassador Baily, was misused. In the letter, Ambassador Bailey expressed disappointment with the information that arrived at that time, that the judges adjudications were dictated by the US Embassy and that some of the judges were hiding behind the Embassy’s influence for some of the adjudications they made.
It also suggests that in the Criminal Court there was a panic at the moment when Bailey “found out” that Stevenson and Medarski misrepresented themselves as his “deputies”. The whole text is based on assumptions and speculations, again without reference to sources.
The allegations by the same portal continued for five days. The second text repeats the same narrative, that is, they blame Stephenson and Medarski that because of their positions and influences at the time, they were extorting money and promising acquittals of persons under investigation of the SPP.
In one part of the text it is stated that the name of the company is “Statecraft”, which is absolutely true, but what is not true is that the meaning of the word is “creating a state”.
The significance of the word Statecraft is actually “Running a State“, and therefore the name of the company cannot be connected to the change of the name of Republic of Macedonia into Republic of North Macedonia.
Both texts contain an identical sentence based on ungrounded information.
The text was transmitted six months later by the portal Express. It is used as a legitimate argument in order to discredit both Medarski and Stevenson.
Medarski and Stevenson had a constitutional right to form the company, and it is worth noting that the company deals with foreign investment services, not with legal or judiciary services.
The justice system is one of the biggest challenges in Republic of North Macedonia, the trust in the Justice system is low, but it does not mean that this context should be abused by the media.
According to the fact that all this information is speculative, the texts do not offer any evidence but rely on assumptions based on certain real facts, however, they mislead the readers and direct towards wrong conclusions.
FINANCED BY
This project was funded in part through a U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the implementers/authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government.
PARTNERS
