Witness at trial: Management Board of State Lottery did not adopt decision on VLT purchase

A former member of the Management Board of the state-owned joint-stock company State Lottery told the court that the board did not adopt a decision on procurement of video lottery terminals (VLTs). The testimony came during the trial against former director Perparim Bajrami, ex-first deputy prime minister Artan Grubi and six others, who are charged with abuse of office and authority in connection with the purchase.

Witness says the Management Board did not approve the VLT purchase

"As far as I know, the video lottery terminals needed to be procured because the company itself would use them to organise games of chance. I do not know how far that went. As the Management Board we did not adopt a decision for this procurement," said witness Hrista Najdanov, who served on the Management Board of the joint-stock company State Lottery, at the hearing.

Najdanov said that during the mandate of general director Katica Nikolovska-Parnakova there were discussions about expanding the company's activities and establishing a separate company to operate video gambling, but that Parna kova was cautious on large moves.

Describing how board meetings were held, Najdanov said that while meetings used to be in-person and allowed discussion, from around 2021 materials began to be circulated electronically and sometimes arrived the same morning the members were expected to reply. "For example, due to urgency, sometimes the materials were delivered in the morning and we had to reply by the afternoon the same day. I speak for myself: sometimes I did not have time to study them carefully and in 99 percent of cases the members' responses were positive. We did not have the chance to call on the services to explain things to us, because none of us were experts in some matters," he said.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyers, Najdanov reiterated that he could not recall any Management Board decision or meeting materials explicitly authorising the VLT procurement, though he recognised that the purchase had been foreseen in the company's financial plan for the relevant year.

The defence of former director Bajrami argued that the absence of Najdanov's recollection does not prove the documents do not exist and pointed to a decision taken by the Supervisory Board, citing the company's statute and Article 33 as grounds for that board's authority. Prosecutors Daniel Kocev and Aleksandar Davchevski attended the hearing.

Photo: “360 stepeni“