The head of North Macedonia’s National Security Agency, ANB, Bojan Hristovski [L] and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski attend the ANB’s sixth anniversary celebration in Skopje, September 1, 2025. Photo: ANB.
After Prime Minister Hristijian Mickoski on Monday said he and his right-wing VMRO DPMNE party were targeted for surveillance by state security agencies while in opposition, the Organised Crime Prosecution said it had already received reports on this from the National Security Agency, ANB, and was probing them.
The prosecution on Tuesday said it received the ANB findings alleging wrongdoing in early August and “immediately opened a case”, adding that “a pre-investigation procedure is currently underway”.
Mickoski made his claim on Monday evening while attending a celebration marking six years since the foundation of the ANB.
“It is a fact that while we were in opposition, both the Intelligence Agency [AR] and the National Security Agency [ANB] were involved thoroughly with the biggest opposition party at that time, and with me,” Mickoski said.
He added that some journalists and businessmen were also targeted. “I expect these rodents to end up where they belong, behind bars,” Mickoski said.
The current head of the ANB, Bojan Hristovski, who was appointed in October last year, supported the PM’s claims.
At the same celebration, Hristovski said that an internal investigation into the agency’s work between 2019 and 2024 revealed “serious indications” that “one former ANB head” – who remains unnamed – “and a small team of employees” inside the ANB misused their office.
Mickoski and Hristovski did not elaborate further, noting that the documentation that the agency has submitted to the prosecution remains classified.
The main opposition Social Democrats, under whose government from 2017 to 2024 the state security system underwent deep reforms, on Tuesday called for a “transparent and lawful” procedure to determine the truth of the matter.
The party said it remained “convinced that unlawful wiretapping ended with the fall of the VMRO DPMNE regime”, which happened in mid-2017.
The Social Democrats were referring to the past practices of former PM and former VMRO DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski.
He lost power in 2017 following two years of massive anti-government protests and political crisis, sparked by revelations in 2015 of a mass wiretapping scandal in which thousands of people were targeted.
The court case over this, which indicted the former secret police chief, Gruevski’s cousin, Saso Mijalkov, ended in a shambles in 2023, when the court discontinued the re-trial following controversial criminal law amendments that reduced sentences for the crimes of abuse of office and involvement in a criminal enterprise.
The ANB and AR were established in 2019 as part of a wider restructuring of the former security system following the 2015 wiretapping scandal.
The two agencies, designed to operate independently from each other and from the Interior Ministry, replaced the notorious secret police agency once led by Mijalkov.
The prime minister’s fresh wiretapping allegations come ahead of October’s local elections.