Telecom affair and bribing politicians of 2005 and 2006 who were in power is not new thing. FBI led the investigation together with the Macedonian police and prosecution and three years ago the police filed criminal charges and court procedure against three persons who are currently at large and was issued international warrant for them. Once they are found will be put on trial and probably new information will be revealed, PM Nikola Gruevski stated answering journalist question after opening double tennis court in “Jan Amos Komenski” primary school in Karpos municipality.

The case became relevant these days after US Securities and Exchange Commission and Deutsche Telecom agree to stop the process and Deutsche Telecom paid certain amount of money as criminal penalty.

We are all aware that in this report it is clearly stated that bribed politicians who were in power in 2005 and 2006 did not allow liberalisation of mobile telephony, i.e. entrance of third mobile operator in the country, Gruevski said.

While VMRO-DPMNE was opposition party at least 10 times we held press conference calling SDSM to enable entrance of third mobile operator aimed at increasing the competitiveness and prices of phone services to drop. SDSM ignored this. And now we all know why SDSM ignored it. Now Macedonian public knows why SDSM did not open public bid for third mobile operator for four years and ignored all our calls for all citizens that paid very high prices for phone because we had one of the most expensive mobile services in Europe, Gruevski said.

He reminded that when VMRO-DPMNE came to power in a deadline of 60 days the international tender for third mobile operator was opened and a third mobile operator entered the market which saw phone prices fall by 70%.

Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska said that from hereon it is clear who protected and who did not protect the monopoly. VMRO-DPMNE in 2007 started investigation and in 2008 filed criminal charges against former general manager of Macedonian Telecom Atila Sendrei and two other associates.