[Translation Prepared by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre]

"Fuel oil 'greases' the investigation into ecocide", 28 March 2025

The prosecution is investigating suspicions of rigged tenders for fuel oil, but not its (poor) quality. The Customs Administration knew that the company RKM was trying to import suspicious fuel oil. The Negotino thermal power plant where it was burned is not obliged to measure harmful emissions and it is not known what was burned. Environmentalists are demanding an expansion of the investigation into the companies that used harmful oil.

The Prosecutor's Office for Prosecution of Organized Crime and Corruption has opened an investigation into rigging tenders and money laundering in the sale of fuel oil, but is not investigating "ecocide," that is, whether the imported fuel oil was still dangerous to the environment.

As announced two weeks ago, the companies RKP and Pucko Petrol, their owners Ratko Kapushevski and Asmir Jahoski, as well as former senior officials at the State Power Plants, are under investigation due to a suspicious manner of purchasing fuel oil for the Negotino Thermal Power Plant.

However, the statement that the Prosecutor's Office sent to the public does not mention an investigation into ecocide, something that has also been disturbing the public for years due to media investigations that the company RKM is attempting to import harmful oil that it declares as fuel oil.

This was confirmed to Radio Free Europe by the Customs Administration, which discovered that the company RKM attempted to import energy that it declared as fuel oil, but the chemical properties do not match the required quality.

In a response to RFE/RL, they said that in the period from 2021 to 2025, tankers with fuel oil were returned from the border on several occasions.