The former Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Nikola Gruevski, has just received another 9 years to his prison sentence.

Gruevski, who has been living in exile in Hungary for three years, is sentenced to a total of 19 years in absentia.

The recent sentence is related to an unlawful demolition of an object, a multi-million investment, that was ruled as politically motivated.

By the trial panel, the offense committed was assessed as motivated for political revenge.

For the same offense, the former Minister of Transport, Mile Jakanievski, was sentenced to three years in prison, while the former Mayor of Gazi Baba in Skopje, Toni Trajkovski, was sentenced to four years in prison.

According to the verdict, the convicts must jointly compensate the damage caused to the businessman Fiat Canovski, in the amount of over 11 million euros.

The investigation against Gruevski and other officials was initiated by the wiretapping scandal that was published in 2013 by Zoran Zaev, the former chairman of the Social Democratic League, which was in opposition at the time.

Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has previously been sentenced to two years in prison for buying a luxury car worth over 600,000 euros, but did not serve his sentence after fleeing northern Macedonia.

Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, on November 13, 2018, announced through the social network Facebook that he had fled to Hungary. A few days later he announced that the Hungarian authorities had approved his request for political asylum due to, as he said, political persecution by the government of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.

On the way to Hungary, Gruevski passed through the territories of Albania, Montenegro and Serbia.