“So now, who is the idiot?” — Ivanovska denounces the Lottery’s contract with ‘Stardust’: signed the day the tender closed

Biljana Ivanovska, former chairwoman of North Macedonia’s State Commission for Prevention of Corruption, has called the €4.8 million deal between the State Lottery and the company Stardust for the 35th independence anniversary programme a prearranged one, as Sloboden Pečat revealed through documents obtained from the Ministry of Justice.

According to the documents, the contract was signed on 8 May — the very day the public tender closed. As 360 Stepeni writes, the contract shows that by the end of that day: a three-member commission chaired by Nikollče Mičevski — who later appeared in the same programme as the orchestrator for Spanish tenor José Carreras — had reviewed the roughly 100-page programme; the 300-million-denar contract between the State Lottery and Stardust had been drafted; and it was signed by Lottery director Aleksandar Klimovski and Stardust manager Mia Miloshevska.

Klimovski himself had stated at the press conference accounting for the money spent that on 8 May, at 10:41, the single bid — about 100 pages from Stardust — had arrived at the Lottery’s offices.

Another shocking detail: the Ministry of Justice declared the Lottery’s sponsorship of Stardust as a sponsorship of public interest in the field of culture only on 16 September — after the celebrations had ended. The Lottery’s request had been sent to the ministry on 12 August, three days after the start of the caravan and the “Silno svetnal den” programme.

“And now? Who is the idiot?” Ivanovska wrote on Facebook, adding: “So, everything is prearranged.” Her phrase recalls the answer Boban Millosheski of Avalon International Booking gave to Sloboden Pečat journalist Mirosllava Simonovska at the press conference before David Guetta’s concert: asked why the contract amount was not being published, he replied “Do I look like an idiot?”, for which he later apologized publicly, saying he had reacted in the heat of the moment.

The public tender had been announced on 4 May under number 01-35C/2026, and only one bid was submitted — that of Stardust DOOEL Skopje, the entity through which Avalon International Booking operated in this procedure. On 10 September, government spokeswoman Marija Miteva and director Klimovski announced that the 300 million denars had been secured from the Lottery’s undistributed 2024 profit.

This is the latest investigative development on the spending scandal around the celebrations, following the 24 September article which reported Spasovski’s questions about the transparency of the €5.53 million spent.