“Zero denars” claim collapses: State Lottery gave 300 million for Hristijan Mickoski’s celebration

The claim that the Independence Day celebration did not cost citizens a single denar collided with figures later disclosed by the Government itself: of a total of about 340 million denari, 300 million were provided from the State Lottery’s undistributed profit, and about 40 million denari were private donations.

The president of SDSM, Venko Filipche, presented documents at a press conference which he said were the minutes of the Government’s 167th session and the public call issued by the State Lottery. According to him, the documents rebut the impression that the entire event was paid for by private sponsors and that no funds from a state entity were used for the celebration.

“The joint-stock company State Lottery is one hundred percent state-owned. The money that enterprise manages is the citizens’ money,”

Filipche said, demanding that the full documentation be published.

After his press conference, Government spokesperson Marija Miteva announced that the events cost about EUR 5.53 million, i.e. MKD 340 million. She stated that MKD 300 million originated from the State Lottery’s undistributed profit for 2024, while about MKD 40 million were secured from socially responsible companies.

Budgetary or corporate money — who is paying the bill?

The director of the State Lottery, Aleksandar Klimovski, defended the procedure on the grounds that these were corporate, not budgetary, funds. Under his interpretation, the money would acquire the status of budget funds only after the profit is determined as a dividend and transferred to the treasury.

This is precisely the core of the political dispute. A direct expenditure from the central budget may be zero, but that does not mean the celebration was paid solely with private donations. The State Lottery is a company in full state ownership, and the decision to allocate MKD 300 million of its undistributed profit to the celebration is a decision on the use of an asset that belongs to the state as the sole shareholder.

Filipche accused the Government of attempting, through an accounting formulation, to create the impression that the spectacle cost nothing. The accusation that this constitutes embezzlement is a political claim and is not a judicially established fact. Still, the already confirmed amount makes it an urgent obligation for the Government to show where every denar ended up.

The question is not an attack on the celebration, but public accounting

VMRO-DPMNE responded that Filipche is opposing an event that united the country, emphasizing that the celebration included more than twenty events and that more than 50,000 people attended the closing concert. But the number of attendees is not an answer to questions about the source of the funds, the contracts and the individual payments.

The Government now needs to publish the minutes of the 167th session, the decision on the use of the profit, the contracts and the full list of recipients. Once it is confirmed that MKD 300 million came from the State Lottery, the narrative that the celebration was financed solely by private companies can no longer be the main story. The main story is how a state asset was allocated and who received it.

Photo: frame from the SDSM press conference