Gordana Jankuloska

Gordana Jankuloska (Macedonian: Гордана Јанкулоска; born 12 October 1975 in Ohrid) is a politician of North Macedonia and a senior member of VMRO-DPMNE. She was minister of internal affairs of the Republic of Macedonia from August 2006 until her resignation on 12 May 2015, in the governments of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. A lawyer, she graduated from the Faculty of Law at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje in 1999 and in 2003 received a master's degree in international commercial law from the University of Kent, with a thesis on normative risks and foreign investment. A March 2015 profile by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network described the appointment as a surprise outside Gruevski's circle because she was then the youngest person to hold the interior portfolio and had no previous background in policing.

From 2000 to 2002 she was a state adviser in the Ministry of Finance and chief of cabinet to Gruevski, then finance minister. She, Transport Minister Mile Janakieski and secret-police chief Sasho Mijalkov were among Gruevski's closest associates and kept those posts from his arrival in power in 2006. The BIRN profile argued that choosing her also covered for Mijalkov, Gruevski's cousin, who formally directed only the Administration for Security and Counterintelligence.

From February 2015 the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, led by Zoran Zaev, released recordings that appeared to show government involvement in electoral fraud, abuse of the justice system and the covering-up of a police officer's killing of a young man. The opposition said Gruevski and Mijalkov had ordered illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people, and Jankuloska, Janakieski and Mijalkov were the main speakers on many of the tapes the opposition treated as most incriminating. She resigned on 12 May 2015, days after the 2015 Kumanovo clashes, in which eight police officers were killed and 37 injured, writing that in a deep political crisis it was time to resign in the hope of helping to resolve it. Gruevski accepted the resignations and proposed Mitko Cavkov, then head of the Public Security Bureau, as her successor.

The recordings were later investigated by a Special Public Prosecutor's Office set up in 2015 under an EU-sponsored agreement between VMRO-DPMNE and the Social Democrats. In the case called "Tank", the Skopje Criminal Court on 8 October 2018 gave her a first-instance sentence of six years for misuse of office over the 2012 purchase of a Mercedes worth 580,000 euros that Gruevski had used in secret; Judge Dobrila Kacarska said Jankuloska had encouraged assistant minister Gjoko Popovski to rig the tender for the dealer Mak Auto Star. She had pleaded not guilty and was absent; the court had separated her trial because she was pregnant. She began a four-year sentence in that case in September 2020. The Skopje Appellate Court ordered conditional release from 1 November 2023 until the term ended on 28 September 2024, noting that she was the mother of a five-year-old child, had followed prison rules and had worked in the prison library.

In "Titanic 1", an election-fraud prosecution covering the 2011 parliamentary elections and the 2013 local elections, she pleaded guilty on 11 February 2022 and was sentenced at first instance to two and a half years; on 4 July 2023 the appellate court replaced that prison term with a suspended sentence. On 13 January 2025 the Skopje Criminal Court acquitted her in "Fortress" ("Tvrdina"), which concerned destruction of wiretapping equipment at the secret police, holding that the prosecution had not proved the charge against her.

Early life and education

Gordana Jankuloska (Macedonian: Гордана Јанкулоска; also rendered Jankulovska in some reporting) was born on 12 October 1975 in Ohrid, then in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, on the territory of present-day North Macedonia. A February 2016 portrait described her as an Ohrid native who grew up and was educated in Skopje. Accounts that record the birth date do not name her parents or any primary or secondary school.

She took a law degree in 1999 from the Faculty of Law at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje. In 2003 she completed a master of laws in international commercial law at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. A caption published by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network with a photograph from her Facebook page gives the thesis title as „Нормативните ризици и странските инвестиции“ (“Normative risks and foreign investments”). A biographical note compiled by the fact-checking project Vistinomer describes that degree as an LLM awarded with distinction. The same note, and a March 2015 BIRN profile, state that in July 2004 the law faculty at Kent gave her an award for special achievement in law.

A U.S. Embassy cable of 17 August 2006, sent as she was about to join the cabinet, recorded that she spoke excellent English, which the embassy linked to an advanced law degree from a British university, and that she also spoke some German. A later embassy sketch, dated 29 July 2008, described her English as fluent.

On 17 December 2015, after she had left the interior ministry, the news site Meta reported that she had defended a doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Security in Skopje and had posted on Facebook, in Macedonian and in English, the line „Од денес д-р Гордана Јанкулоска“ (“From today, Dr Gordana Jankuloska”). Meta gave the dissertation title as „Современи методи во сузбивањето на транснационалниот економско финансиски криминал“ (“Contemporary methods in the suppression of transnational economic and financial crime”). The faculty, which describes itself as the continuation of a security-training centre founded in 1977 and of the Police Academy created in 2003, has since 2008 been a unit of the University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in Bitola, with its premises in the Idrizovo area of Skopje.

The university’s formal promotion was held on 25 April 2016 at the rectorate in Bitola, where 14 candidates, three of them in security studies, received the title of doctor of science. Two young men entered the hall with a banner reading „Честито аболиција“ (“Congratulations on the pardon”). The slogan referred to the decision of President Gjorge Ivanov, announced on 12 April 2016, to pardon politicians who were facing criminal investigations, a step that halted work by the Special Public Prosecutor’s Office. Balkan Insight reported that one of those inquiries, into alleged falsification of identification documents and breaches of electoral rights, concerned Jankuloska and former transport minister Mile Janakieski. Rector Sašo Korunovski apologised and said that every candidate who had reached the doctorate had passed a serious selection. Meta’s English report said she attended with her husband, Vlatko Ilievski.

Early career and entry into politics

Gordana Jankuloska moved from private legal work into the Ministry of Finance under Nikola Gruevski and then into the leadership of VMRO-DPMNE. By August 2006 she was the party’s secretary general, a councillor in Skopje, a deputy in the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, and Gruevski’s nominee for minister of internal affairs.

Ministry of Finance

A 2016 profile by the Skopje fact-checking project Vistinomer says she worked as a lawyer in the private sector in 1999–2000, after a law degree in Skopje in 1999, and again in 2004–2006. The same profile states that from 2000 to 2002 she was a state adviser in the Ministry of Finance and, in that period, chief of the minister’s cabinet. It describes that advisory work as coordination of the legal, general and accounting sector, the property-law administration, second-instance tax and customs decisions, capital management, information technology, and the directorate for the prevention of money laundering, and it also lists posts as head of a unit and as an independent adviser in international finance. A U.S. Embassy cable from Skopje on 17 August 2006, sent as Gruevski formed a cabinet, dates the ministry work more narrowly: legal adviser and chief of cabinet to Gruevski from December 2000 to July 2002. The cable records that Gruevski, elected VMRO-DPMNE president in 2003, was trade minister briefly in 1999 and finance minister from that year until 2002. After the VMRO-DPMNE-led government lost the 2002 elections, it says, he appointed her chief of cabinet in the party president’s office.

VMRO-DPMNE and elected office

She was appointed secretary general in September 2004 and held the post until she was proposed as interior minister. In late 2004 a faction around former prime minister Ljubčo Georgievski left to form VMRO–People’s Party, which OSCE/ODIHR later noted held more seats than VMRO-DPMNE in the outgoing Assembly but trailed it in the 2005 municipal elections. In the 2005 local elections she was elected a Skopje city councillor, a mandate the Vistinomer profile places in 2005/2006.

The Interior Ministry biography, as described in 2015 by BIRN’s Prizma, said only that she was a private-sector lawyer from 2004 to 2006, without naming an employer. Prizma reported that she was mentioned in the team of Analitiko AI, registered in 2005 at the party press-centre address alongside several later government and party officials. The firm was deleted from the trade register on 15 December 2007, after a May 2006 contract with Makedonski Telekom for marketing and SIM-card distribution worth 120,000 euros. Prizma treated that engagement, and a presidency of the board of Nova payment card, as work left out of the official biography. Zagorac Tumbovski, described there as a VMRO-DPMNE member since 1990, told TV Telma that in 2006 he gave the party about 80,000 euros in cash and that Gruevski told him to deliver it personally to Jankuloska.

Parliamentary elections on 5 July 2006 filled all 120 Assembly seats, twenty in each of six districts, by proportional representation with no threshold. OSCE/ODIHR found that the vote largely met OSCE commitments and was competitive and generally well administered, while recording campaign violence and intimidation and serious election-day irregularities in parts of the country. The Assembly’s results list Jankuloska among 45 deputies on the VMRO-DPMNE coalition slate, named as VMRO-DPMNE with the Liberal Party, the Socialist Party, the Democratic Union, the Party for the Movement of Turks in Macedonia and the Union of Roma of Macedonia. That slate was the largest bloc; “For Macedonia Together” is listed with 32 deputies.

On 14 August 2006 Gruevski announced a cabinet with Jankuloska, born in Ohrid in 1975, as interior minister. The embassy called her one of the party’s brightest young political talents, with strong organisational skills, excellent English, a British advanced law degree and some German, a close confidante who was not regarded as decisive on key policy, and someone with no police experience. It said the programme stressed economic development and the fight against corruption and organised crime, with the Democratic Party of Albanians, the New Social Democratic Party, the Socialist Party and the Liberal Party as intended partners, and that parliament was expected to vote on 25 August. The Assembly record states that Gruevski was elected prime minister, and Jankuloska a minister, on 26 August 2006, and that Vele Gjorgjievski took her seat from 14 September 2006.

In 2015 Prizma wrote that the choice surprised much of the public because she was the youngest interior minister to that point and had no background in the field, although Georgievski had already appointed Dosta Dimovska. The article said that inside Gruevski’s circle the appointment was expected, as cover for his cousin Sašo Mijalkov, formally slated only to direct the Security and Counterintelligence Administration, and as a signal of milder policing.

Minister of Internal Affairs

Appointment and cabinets

Gordana Jankuloska (spelled Jankulovska in some English-language reports) was minister of internal affairs of the Republic of Macedonia—the name used throughout her term—from 26 August 2006 to 13 May 2015. The office, often called interior minister in English, covered the police and sat in the governments of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of VMRO-DPMNE. A U.S. embassy cable on the 2008 cabinet stated that she was born in Ohrid in 1975—about 30 when first appointed—and described her as a Gruevski confidante who had worked in the Ministry of Finance and as VMRO-DPMNE secretary-general; it does not call her the youngest person to hold the office.

On 26 July 2008 the Assembly approved a VMRO-DPMNE coalition with the Democratic Union for Integration by 77 votes to none, with the main opposition absent, and the embassy reported that Jankuloska continued for a second term. Parliament approved a further Gruevski government on the night of 28 July 2011, by 70 votes to 47, after early elections on 5 June. On 19 June 2014 it endorsed his fourth cabinet by 77 votes to 6, with almost no opposition deputies present; Balkan Insight reported that she remained police minister. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, citing a government spokesman, reported that Gruevski accepted her resignation on 12 May 2015. The ministry dates the end of the term as 13 May 2015.

Organization, personnel and equipment

The ministry paired a Bureau for Public Security, covering uniformed, criminal and border police, with a separate Administration for Security and Counterintelligence. The Law on Police, in force from November 2007, was treated by the European Commission as a central accession priority. By late 2007, 22 local station commanders had been named with municipal approval for the first time. The Commission’s 2008 report said eight regional commanders had been appointed and all 38 local commanders selected in consultation with municipal councils.

A Law on Internal Affairs enacted in July 2009 introduced a career and appraisal system, barred police officers from holding party office, separated counterintelligence work from the Bureau for Public Security in organised-crime cases, and widened parliamentary accountability of the intelligence agencies. Amendments to the Law on Interception of Communications that removed the interior minister’s direct role in authorising interceptions were in force by the Commission’s 2013 assessment, although detailed secondary rules against undue influence were still missing. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project wrote in 2014 that Sašo Mijalkov, Gruevski’s cousin and chief of the counterintelligence administration, held influence his title did not capture, and quoted opposition claims that he “controls the whole state.”

The Commission found the statutes ahead of practice. In 2008 it called politicisation of senior officers a serious concern and noted that an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe election mission had found the Law on Police disregarded in some places during that year’s early elections. Its 2011 report said about 160 authorised posts in the regional Sectors for Internal Affairs had been filled without advertised vacancies, and that only about 64 percent of posts in the new Centre for Suppression of Organised and Serious Crime were filled. An amendment that year allowed pay to be reduced when staff were moved to lower posts after reorganisation. The same report said recorded corruption among border police had been falling, which it linked to anti-corruption programmes, training, CCTV and salary increases, without giving a pay scale.

On equipment, the Commission reported in 2008 that large purchases, including replacement of the vehicle fleet, had been decided, while merit-based appraisal was not yet in place. By 2011 the second phase of the TETRA radio network covered about 40 percent of the country, but border police still lacked adequate technical equipment and budget, and stations responsible for border surveillance still had no access to the ministry’s central database. OCCRP reported that the ministry budget had risen from about US$146 million in 2006 to about US$218 million in 2014, of which about US$170 million was for security. The 2014 progress report said training of 330 cadets begun in 2012 had produced 318 new officers, with a further 400 cadets appointed at the end of 2013, and that an independent external oversight body was still missing. In 2013 that department filed 85 criminal charges against 603 people, including drug-trafficking and migrant-smuggling cases, while amendments introduced a competency-based career system and the bureau was reorganised around a national intelligence model. The Commission still called the country advanced against organised crime, with understaffing, missing databases and politicisation unresolved.

International cooperation

A strategic agreement with Europol entered into force in March 2008; an operational agreement allowing exchange of personal data was still being negotiated. By 2009 the ministry’s Interpol office worked around the clock, and all border crossings and the four regional border-police headquarters were connected to Interpol databases. The Commission said preparations were being made to deepen cooperation chiefly with Europol and Frontex. In 2011 it reported good cooperation with Frontex, a joint police-and-customs contact centre with Bulgaria, and protocols on joint border patrols with Bulgaria, Serbia and Kosovo. Visa-free travel to the Schengen area from 19 December 2009 was followed by more unfounded asylum applications in some EU states; the authorities answered with public campaigns and tighter border checks and profiling.

In Belgrade, Jankuloska and Serbian interior minister Ivica Dačić signed an agreement intended to give existing cooperation, including work on organised crime and drug routes, a formal legal basis. Balkan Insight reported that the deal, concluded in November and ratified by the Macedonian parliament on 14 February 2012, was denounced by the Democratic Party of Albanians as letting Serbian police operate on Macedonian territory; a police spokesperson said it was not directed at any community. In 2013 the Commission reported continued work through Europol and Interpol, preparations to connect to Europol’s SIENA system, and that a liaison officer had still not been sent to Europol; 149 international arrest warrants were issued in 2012, and the 2014 report put the 2013 figure at 225. The 2014 report also said six police stations used for border surveillance still needed a link to the ministry database, and that border-management coordination inside government remained weak.

Security incidents

Four episodes while Gordana Jankuloska (also spelled Jankulovska) was interior minister of Macedonia, now North Macedonia, drew sustained argument over the police: a tourist-boat sinking, a fatal beating by an officer, five murders near Skopje, and a gun battle in Kumanovo.

2009 Ohrid boat accident

On 5 September 2009 the sightseeing boat Ilinden capsized and sank in daylight on Lake Ohrid. Fifteen tourists from Bulgaria were killed. The port captain in Ohrid said the vessel, registered for 45 passengers, had about 70 tourists aboard, about 60 of them Bulgarian, and the captain was arrested on suspicion of negligence. Jankuloska told Reuters that 15 people were confirmed dead, three were still missing, and a boat certified for 43 had been carrying 73.

Transport minister Mile Janakieski offered to resign on ethical grounds; Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski refused. The opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia moved no confidence in both, arguing that the port authority and coastal police were theirs to oversee and that failures there had created a "chaotic situation" on the lake. On 14 October parliament rejected the motion against Jankuloska by 69 votes to 16. She said the police had "done its job exceptionally well" and accused the opposition of profiting from the deaths; only the captain had been detained, and investigators pointed to overloading.

2011 killing of Martin Neskovski

Shortly after midnight on 6 June 2011, 22-year-old Martin Neskovski (also spelled Neshkovski and Neškovski) died in Skopje after a beating at celebrations of the previous day's election victory by the ruling VMRO-DPMNE. On 7 June police named him, said 33-year-old "Tigers" officer Igor Spasov had turned himself in, and opened a murder investigation. Witnesses said an officer beat a young man who had tripped and did not resist, and that the body was moved from Macedonia Square; police had first denied any incident.

Protesters demanded an inquiry and Jankuloska's resignation. The ministry refused, calling the death one officer's act and denying a cover-up. At trial in November 2011 Spasov, the only accused, pleaded not guilty, saying he was on duty, chased Neskovski for trying to climb the stage, and hit him after a fall thinking he was pretending.

In May 2015 the SDSM under Zoran Zaev released recordings it said showed Jankuloska, Gruevski, secret-police chief Saso Mijalkov and others working to leave blame with Spasov alone. As the opposition presented the tapes, she says she was told only after two days, first of an overdose, and that the victim "neither ran nor resisted"; the SDSM said the prime minister's security chief had summoned Spasov, against the claim that he was off duty.

Smilkovci lake murders

On 12 April 2012, around Orthodox Easter, five ethnic Macedonian men were found shot near Smilkovci Lake, also reported as Železarsko Ezero, on Skopje's northern edge. Filip Slavkovski, Aleksandar Nakjevski, Cvetanco Acevski and Kire Trickovski, aged 18 to 20, lay lined up as if executed; 45-year-old Borce Stevkovski was found nearby. Some ethnic Macedonian protests turned violent and were directed at the Albanian minority.

On 1 May, in Operation Monster, more than 800 officers at 26 sites arrested 20 people described as radicalised Muslims, whom police said included the killers. Jankuloska said they were "radical Islamists who have been fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan against NATO" and would face terrorism charges, and described the killings as meant to inflame ethnic and religious tension. Bujar Osmani of the coalition Democratic Union for Integration said Albanians could not accept collective blame.

In June 2014 six ethnic Albanian defendants received life sentences for terrorism and a seventh was acquitted; two were tried in absentia while held in Kosovo. The court found an intent to provoke ethnic conflict; Albanian protests then clashed with police. A retrial began in May 2018 after prosecutors asked the Supreme Court to quash the life terms over new circumstances and questionable evidence. On 23 February 2021 Alil Demiri, Afrim Ismailovic and Agim Ismailovic again got life, Fejzi Aziri and Haki Aziri 15 and nine years, and Samir Ljuta was acquitted. Lawyer Naser Raufi called the case fabricated; prosecutors said wiretaps had not altered it. Jankuloska, in a taped 16 April 2012 call, said nothing like it had happened "not even in the war," and in 2020 testified with Mijalkov that they had no advance knowledge and that the inquiry was lawful.

2015 Kumanovo clashes

On 9–10 May 2015 special police fought an armed group in the Divo Naselje neighbourhood of Kumanovo, in the deadliest violence since 2001. Shooting began around 4:30 a.m. on 9 May against what spokesman Ivo Kotevski called a well-trained group that had come from a neighbouring country to attack state institutions with automatic weapons, bombs and snipers.

Jankuloska said the group had planned attacks on strategic targets and called five officers then reported dead "heroes." When fighting ended on 10 May, police reported eight officers dead and 37 wounded, about 30 gunmen surrendered and no known civilian casualties; the toll of dead gunmen, first put at 14, was later revised to 10. Gruevski said the action was not a Macedonian–Albanian conflict. The ministry named five Kosovans as the group's leaders and tied them to an April attack on a police station at Gosince. Ali Ahmeti said a surrounded gunman called him and that he urged surrender.

Critics asked whether the raid, during the wiretapping crisis, was meant to divert attention from it. Zaev spoke of "strong indications" of "a scenario orchestrated by the power holders." In November 2017 a court convicted 33 defendants of terrorism, seven to life, and acquitted four; the accused said they had fired in self-defence or been lured into a trap. BIRN quoted an anonymous intelligence officer claiming the agency "completely organised" the clash, which VMRO-DPMNE leaders including President Gjorge Ivanov denied. The clashes immediately preceded her resignation; she wrote that she hoped to help resolve a "deep political crisis."

Wiretapping scandal and resignation

The recordings

From 9 February 2015, Zoran Zaev, leader of the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), released batches of audio in the Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) that he called information "bombs." He said insiders in the security services had supplied illegally intercepted calls, and that Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his cousin Sašo Mijalkov, director of the Administration for Security and Counterintelligence (UBK), had ordered surveillance of more than 20,000 people, including politicians, journalists, judges and ministers. He said eavesdropping on that scale required the UBK and the mobile operators, and rejected a foreign-intelligence source. VMRO-DPMNE said Zaev was publishing material created with foreign intelligence services. Gruevski called Zaev a foreign spy; Zaev was charged with espionage and ordered to surrender his passport.

SDSM presented Jankuloska as a main voice in the conversations and as someone whose own calls had been recorded. The first batch included what the opposition identified as a private call between her and Finance Minister Zoran Stavreski about party control of public jobs. On 15 February, five further recordings were offered as evidence of interference in the courts. A voice identified as hers urges former justice minister Mihajlo Manevski over a Supreme Court matter involving a Judicial Council member, tells Stavreski that charges against him were dropped after she asked a prosecutor to "take a look and take care of it," and asks whether a Prilep judge was "100 per cent one of ours."

On 6 March, SDSM released conversations it dated to the March 2013 local elections and attributed in part to Jankuloska, Gruevski and Transport Minister Mile Janakieski. As published, she discusses identity cards and crowded addresses for ethnic Macedonians brought from Albania's Prespa region, police "technical checkups" used to stop buses going to opposition rallies, and, in a close contest, dragging "one gypsy after another by their ears" to vote. The ruling party again said the material came from foreign intelligence services.

A 5 May batch concerned the June 2011 beating death of Martin Neskovski by special-police officer Igor Spasov, later sentenced to 14 years. The opposition said recordings of Jankuloska, Gruevski, Mijalkov and others showed a plan to blame Spasov alone and to say he had been off duty. In the published material Mijalkov tells her the case is closed; she says she was informed only after two days, complains that "one cannot hide a murder," and speaks of a "parallel police," while Gruevski appears to instruct her to say publicly that Spasov acted alone. She repeated that day that unnamed foreign services had cut the tapes with the opposition, and said she would not resign.

By mid-May Zaev had held 30 such presentations. The recordings later defined a separate prosecutor's remit: after a June agreement in talks brokered by European Union enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn, parliament on 15 September 2015 elected Katica Janeva to investigate the surveillance claims and related offences.

Protests and departure from office

The Neskovski recordings drew crowds to the government building in Skopje that afternoon, including his mother and brother, calling for Jankuloska and the cabinet to resign. Protesters passed a police cordon, lowered flags to half-mast and broke windows; after 9 p.m. police used tear gas, water cannon, stun grenades and armoured vehicles. Jankuloska said 38 officers and one civilian were injured and 30 people arrested, and denied excessive force; rights groups said activists were beaten.

On the night of 12 May, Gruevski accepted the resignations of Jankuloska, Janakieski and Mijalkov, in office since 2006 and among the main voices in the recordings. Her letter said: "In these tough days, when Macedonia is in deep political crisis, it is time for me to resign, which I hope will help in resolving it." Mijalkov wrote that he hoped to help end "the crisis imposed by the opposition with its anti-state behaviour." The departures followed clashes on 9–10 May in Kumanovo, in which eight police officers were killed and 37 people injured. The previous day, ambassadors of the United States, the European Union, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom told Gruevski the allegations were not being investigated; US ambassador Jess Baily said the inaction cast doubt on Euro-Atlantic commitments.

Parliament, boycotted by the opposition, confirmed the successors on 13 May: Mitko Čavkov, also spelled Cavkov, head of the Public Safety Bureau, as interior minister, and Vlado Misajlovski as transport minister. Gruevski said the outgoing officials had shown "professionalism and patriotism" and that under Jankuloska and Mijalkov the interior ministry had become "an example to the world." Zaev called the resignations "just a step towards the end of Nikola Gruevski." The Macedonian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights said Čavkov did not meet the constitutional rule that the interior minister be a civilian for three years before appointment, and the Protestiram movement called the reshuffle cosmetic.

On 17 May, tens of thousands returned outside the government building, waving Macedonian and Albanian flags and again demanding Gruevski's resignation; the opposition estimated up to 100,000 people and state media reported 20,000.

Criminal proceedings

Criminal proceedings against Gordana Jankuloska in North Macedonia grew out of covert recordings that the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia began releasing in February 2015, and out of the Special Public Prosecutor’s Office created that year under an agreement brokered by the European Union between that party and the governing VMRO-DPMNE. The office investigated allegations, drawn from the recordings, of illegal surveillance of more than 20,000 people and other abuses under Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who said unnamed foreign intelligence services had fabricated the tapes. The special prosecution was dissolved in March 2020 amid a scandal involving chief prosecutor Katica Janeva, and its unfinished cases passed to the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office for Prosecuting Organized Crime and Corruption.

The Tank case

The case known as Tank, or Tenk, concerned the Interior Ministry’s 2012 purchase of an armoured Mercedes-Benz S 600. The special prosecution opened an investigation on 24 January 2017. An indictment filed on 29 June 2017 and confirmed on 27 November 2017 charged Jankuloska and assistant minister Gjoko Popovski with abuse of official position and authority, and Gruevski with accepting a reward for unlawful influence. Prosecutors alleged that between February and October 2012 Gruevski told Jankuloska to arrange a tender for a car for his own use, that she directed Popovski to draft specifications favouring the dealer Mak Autostar, and that the firm, as sole bidder, received a contract worth 35,226,000 denars (€572,780). The trial judge put the car at €580,000, against an earlier ministry plan, described in court, to spend about €243,000. The defendants denied the charges, and Gruevski called the trial politically motivated.

In April 2018 the Skopje Criminal Court separated Jankuloska’s trial because of a high-risk pregnancy. On 23 May 2018 it sentenced Gruevski to two years for receiving a reward after illegally influencing the purchase, and Popovski to six and a half years. On 5 October 2018 the Skopje Court of Appeals upheld Gruevski’s term and reduced Popovski’s to four and a half years; Gruevski then went to Hungary and did not serve the sentence. On 8 October 2018 Judge Dobrila Kacarska sentenced Jankuloska, who was absent and had pleaded not guilty, to six years for misuse of office, finding that she had deliberately encouraged Popovski to rig the tender. The defence said the length of the proceedings violated her rights; the court rejected that argument and barred her from leaving Skopje. On 28 March 2019 the Court of Appeals cut her sentence to four years, and in September 2020 the Supreme Court refused an extraordinary review. She later served that four-year sentence. In November 2025 the European Court of Human Rights opened proceedings on her application concerning the fairness of the Tank trial.

The Titanic case

Titanic, or Titanik, was an electoral investigation the special prosecution opened on 12 February 2016 and later split into three trials. Titanic 1 concerned the 2011 parliamentary elections and the 2013 local elections. The indictment named Gruevski, Jankuloska, transport minister Mile Janakieski and other VMRO-DPMNE officials and associates, alleging criminal association, violation of voters’ freedom of choice, violation of voting rights, destruction of election material, misuse of campaign funds and related offences. Gruevski was a fugitive by the time of judgment.

On 11 February 2022, at the third hearing, Jankuloska, Janakieski, Gruevski’s former cabinet chief Martin Protugjer and five other defendants pleaded guilty. On 28 February 2022 the Skopje Basic Criminal Court sentenced Jankuloska to two and a half years in prison and Janakieski to four and a half years. In a judgment dated 18 May 2023 and announced on 4 July 2023, the Skopje Appellate Court partly allowed the appeals. It rejected the criminal-association charge against Jankuloska, Janakieski and Protugjer; treated as established one-year terms for her convictions for violating voters’ freedom of determination and violating the right to vote; and, under Article 44 of the Criminal Code, imposed a single suspended sentence of one year and eight months, not to be carried out if she committed no new offence within five years of the judgment becoming final. Janakieski’s term was set at three years and six months. Transparency International reported that the Supreme Court later upheld these convictions.

Fortress and related cases

On 30 March 2016 the special prosecution opened Fortress, into the destruction of communications-interception systems at the Administration for Security and Counterintelligence, and on 18 November 2016 it opened Target, into unlawful wiretapping; the files were joined as Target–Fortress. An indictment of 30 June 2017 charged twelve people, including former security chief Sašo Mijalkov, Jankuloska, Goran Grujevski and Nikola Boškovski, with criminal association, abuse of office and forgery. Prosecutors alleged that in February 2015 Mijalkov ordered Grujevski to destroy two systems as obsolete, that Jankuloska approved the operation, and that records were backdated to 2014. They said at least 4,286 numbers were monitored without a court order between 2008 and 2015, and the defendants denied the charges. In June 2018 the Criminal Court separated her procedure because she was pregnant, and also separated Grujevski and Boškovski, who had fled to Greece.

On 26 February 2021 the Skopje Basic Criminal Court convicted eleven defendants, giving Mijalkov 12 years, Grujevski and Boškovski 15 years each, and Jankuloska four years. On 16 December 2022 the Court of Appeals quashed that verdict for procedural violations and ordered a retrial. After Criminal Code amendments in September 2023 shortened limitation periods, the court in October 2023 stopped the wiretapping-related counts of criminal association and abuse of office against Mijalkov, Grujevski and four others as time-barred.

What remained was the destruction of the equipment. On 13 January 2025 the Skopje Criminal Court convicted Toni Jakimovski, sentenced to three years; Grujevski and Boškovski, tried in absentia and given single terms the state news agency reported as 14.6 and 9.9 years; and Valentina Simonovska, given a conditional two-year sentence with five years’ probation. The court found that Verint and Nice Track systems had been destroyed at a Skopje landfill in 2015, with parts taken to a crushing plant, and valued the damage at €1,418,000. Jankuloska was acquitted because the prosecution had not proved the offence. Judge Ilija Trpkov called the time bar on the wiretapping counts an intrusion into the judiciary.

Presidential pardons

On 12 April 2016 President Gjorge Ivanov announced pardons for politicians and officials facing criminal investigations, most of them from the governing parties and already under scrutiny by the special prosecution. He said he used a constitutional power, without consulting the parties, to end a crisis he described as imposed from abroad. VMRO-DPMNE said it deeply disagreed, arguing that the pardons blocked it from exposing what it called constructions against the party. Opposition leader Zoran Zaev called the decision a coup and urged protests, and the United States embassy said it raised serious concerns about the rule of law.

The Strasbourg court later recorded that in March 2016 the Constitutional Court had annulled the 2009 pardon law, and that in April Ivanov nevertheless issued 51 individual pardons covering 56 people, Jankuloska among them. Balkan Insight reported that she received 11 pardons, Janakieski 16 and Gruevski five, while Zaev received two in cases brought by the ordinary prosecution. Protests known as the Colourful Revolution followed, and the European Union and the United States demanded that the pardons be withdrawn. After a change in the law he revoked 22 pardons and, on 6 June 2016, withdrew all 56, citing pressure and conflicting interpretations, while still saying the original act could have aided “national reconciliation”. Trial courts then treated the pardons as having no legal effect. In February 2023 the European Court of Human Rights declared complaints about that annulment inadmissible for failure to exhaust domestic remedies, calling them premature while the criminal cases remained open.

Imprisonment and conditional release

On the evening of 28 September 2020, police took former interior minister Gordana Jankuloska from her home to Idrizovo prison, on the eastern outskirts of Skopje, to begin a four-year sentence in the case known as "Tank." The Ministry of Interior confirmed that a person with the initials G.J. had been admitted; she was reported to have arrived at about 6 p.m. The term, for abuse of office in the procurement of a luxury Mercedes-Benz worth about €600,000 for then prime minister Nikola Gruevski, had become final on 17 September, when the Supreme Court of North Macedonia rejected an extraordinary review of the appellate judgment. An enforcement judge had postponed execution until 1 July 2019 so that she could care for a child, and the Supreme Court had deferred imprisonment until it ruled on that remedy. Ivan Džolev, president of the Skopje Criminal Court, said no further delay was possible because she had already used the postponement granted while the child was under one. Prison director Aco Donev said coronavirus intake rules would keep her in quarantine for at least 15 days.

In an October 2023 interview, after nearly three years inside, Jankuloska called the conditions catastrophic and "below every dignified level," and said photographs from a justice minister's visit showed damp walls in her wing. She described a relatively small space, a ban on mobile phones and the internet, family contact through a telephone booth, and visits three times a month for one hour. Her son had just turned five; she said he had been left with his father from the age of two years and three months. Former special prosecutor Katica Janeva, serving seven years in a separate case, was an immediate neighbour; Jankuloska said neither woman had chosen the placement and that they spoke only about daily prison life.

On 16 March 2023 the Commission for Prevention and Protection against Discrimination found direct sex discrimination by the Directorate for the Execution of Sanctions, against Jankuloska and against women prisoners generally. Her complaint of 22 December 2022 had argued that women, held only in closed-regime Idrizovo, could not use benefits open to men after one-third of a sentence or for good conduct, including outside visits, leave, rest, and outside work. The commission recommended a six-month action plan for semi-open and open facilities for women. After the Ministry of Justice and the directorate amended the placement rules, director Zoran Jovanovski said five women, Jankuloska among them, were approved for weekend absence—her first such leave in nearly three years.

The Skopje Appellate Court reversed a decision of the Basic Criminal Court on her request for conditional release. At a non-public session on 4 October 2023, in case KR-133/23, the court rejected as unfounded an appeal by the Basic Public Prosecutor's Office for Prosecuting Organised Crime and Corruption, upheld her appeal, and ordered release on 1 November 2023. Supervision ran until 28 September 2024, provided she committed no new offence. It cited her status as the mother of a five-year-old deprived of maternal care, and prison reports of compliance with house rules, an absence of violent or conflict behaviour, friendly relations with other prisoners, and personal and social responsibility. From 25 October 2022 she had worked in the women's-ward library, performing the duties diligently, on time and in full, and had used privileges outside the prison; the court held that the purpose of punishment in Article 32 of the Criminal Code had been met. She left Idrizovo on the morning of 1 November 2023, after three years and one month, a departure confirmed by her husband and lawyer, Vlatko Ilievski. A later communication from the European Court of Human Rights on the Tank proceedings is addressed separately.

Later developments

On 13 January 2025 the Criminal Court in Skopje acquitted Gordana Jankuloska in “Fortress” (“Tvrdina”), the remaining “Target–Fortress” count over destruction of surveillance equipment used by the Administration for Security and Counterintelligence, because prosecutors had not proved the charge. It convicted four others of abuse of office and document forgery for destroying the Verint and Nice Track systems at a Skopje scrapyard in 2015 and crushing the remains, damage put at €1,418,000. Goran Grujevski and Nikola Boškovski, tried in absentia after fleeing to Greece, received 14 years and six months and nine years and ten months. Toni Jakimovski was sentenced to three years and Valentina Simonovska to a suspended two-year term. Charges against former director Sašo Mijalkov and others for the interception itself had been halted in October 2023 as time-barred after amendments to the Criminal Code, so the January judgment covered only the destruction counts. Judge Ilija Trpkov said more than 20,000 people had been monitored without court orders and that those counts should not have expired.

European Court of Human Rights

In November 2025 the European Court of Human Rights communicated Jankuloska’s application over the separate “Tank” case, the purchase of an armored Mercedes, to the government of North Macedonia. The communication seeks the state’s observations under the European Convention on Human Rights; it is not a judgment that the Convention was breached.

On 24 November 2025 she said the Court had raised the questions about five years after she applied. Her husband and lawyer, Vlatko Ilievski, told the Media Information Agency that the government had until 5 March 2026 to answer. He said the questions covered access to wiretaps held by the former Special Prosecutor’s Office, impartiality, the speed of a trial that resumed less than two months after she gave birth, and the presumption of innocence. He said a judge sentencing Nikola Gruevski and Gjoko Popovski had already named her as the instigator while her case was severed because she was pregnant, so that she had been “convicted in advance.” He expected a finding of an Article 6 violation, which he said was required for a retrial rather than a financial settlement; the Court had made no such finding.

Hristijan Mickoski, then prime minister, treated the announcement as evidence of failings by judges and prosecutors he linked to the previous government. The opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia said the Court had only checked formal admissibility under Article 35 and had not examined the merits.

Public statements

In an interview with the same agency published on 28 November 2025, Jankuloska called the Tank trial “an ordinary farce with a predetermined outcome” and said procedure and evidence had been “at a significantly lower level” than at the Nuremberg trials or in Informbiro-era cases. She said there had been no criminal offense, that propaganda had driven the case, and that the court had partnered with the prosecution. She sought a domestic retrial and said money could not make up for the years her son spent without her. SDSM answered that the comparison was misplaced because the Nuremberg trials judged Nazi leaders, described her as part of a system of wiretapping and repression serving VMRO-DPMNE and Gruevski, and called her Mickoski’s party colleague. Reports in 2025 still identified her as a former interior minister, not as an office-holder.