Branislav Dimitrijevic has secured lucrative public contracts in North Macedonia despite facing charges of fraud in Armenia, investigative journalists have found.
Macedonian national Dimitrijevic was charged on 6 December 2018 in Armenia with “large-scale fraud” during the construction of a north-south highway. At the time of the alleged crime, Dimitrijevic was the team leader for the French-Spanish consortium Safege-Eptisa.
As a result of his charges, Dimitrijevic was then banned from leaving Armenia. According to prosecutors, Dimitrijevic fled the country with the help of three Macedonian diplomats, a private plan and a different passport.
Dimitrijevic faces spending years in prison if he is ultimately found guilty in an Armenian court.
Despite this, Dimitrijevic was one of the winners of a 22 million euro Macedonian government tender to supervise more road building. This project includes corridors 8 and 10D, and is being built by the US-Turkish consortium Bechtel-ENKA.
The director of North Macedonia’s state roads enterprise, Ejup Rustemi, signed the deal with Paolo Orsini of the Italian engineering company IRD in February this year. Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski was even witness to the deal.
IRD is the lead partner in a consortium that also includes Evro Konsalting, co-owned by Dimitrijevic, Spanish Eptisa, the company Dimitrijevic worked for in Armenia, and Elektra Solution, owned by Andon Ampov.
The Public Enterprise for State Roads said the consortium won on the basis of its offer being of “best quality and price.” When asked about Dimitrijevic’s legal issues in Armenia, the agency told reporters: “the entire selection procedure was conducted in accordance with all laws and bylaws regulating public procurement and was transparent from the outset.”
Evro Konsalting has also won other public contracts. The company was founded in 2002, and managed by Dimitrijevic for more than a decade. In 2021, Dimitrijevic made his son Zoran the manager, and Elisaveta Ivanova joined as co-owner.
At that time, state and municipal authorities in North Macedonia signed more than 270 public contracts with the consultancy, worth a total of 4.5 million euros.
In 2021, at the same time that Dimitrijevic was on the run from Armenian authorities, the consultancy won 11 public contracts worth a total of 650,000 euros.
Dimitrijevic’s firm also supervised building projects during a controversial upgrade of Skopje, under then Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who fled to Hungary in 2018. The Skopje 2014 project has faced numerous allegations of corruption.
Image via Pixabay
