Macedonia: Two leading professors implicated in anti-corruption push

Two leading professors, three other professors, an associate professor and a cafeteria manager are being implicated in the largest corruption case to ever hit Macedonia’s high education system.

Former Dean of the state run Economic Faculty in Skopje Bobek Suklev and Taki Fiti, professor at the same faculty and current President of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, are reportedly the two chief suspects in the case.

Suklev was detained on Monday afternoon as he was leaving the university campus grounds in downtown Skopje. Media reports indicate that the professors had a well established system of seeking bribes from students, often paid through the campus cafeteria employees. Suklev was Dean of the faculty for record setting five terms in a row. Fiti was Finance Minister in the SDSM Government between 1996 and 1998, and before that was widely named as one of the leading architects of the messy privatization process, which saw state owned companies sold off to their Communist era appointed managers, resulting a dramatic economic drop and spike in unemployment.

Reports of corruption in the public universities in Macedonia are rampant, but, unlike other countries in the region, there have been few charges being brought. The Economic Faculty is part of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, which is the main high education institution in the country.

KURIR

7 June 2016