Specific cases were analyzed of potentially illegally conducted tender procedures in which the care for public money was not primary. These cases are selected through an analysis of the findings of the red flags applied by the Public Procurement Bureau, through research based on publicly available information, as well as through consultations with citizens. We highlight some of the key findings from 3 analyzed tenders:
- Procurement of passports, ID cards and driver’s licenses:
In 5 years, citizens paid 73 million euros for personal documents based on a 21-year-old tender and contracts that are “confidential”.
- The production of passports, ID cards and driver’s licenses in the last five years cost MIA 29 million euros, and to obtain these documents, citizens paid 73 million, or 44 million euros more.
- MFA tender for airplane lease:Evacuation flights for the citizens from the Middle East worth 1 million euros, paid in advance, above the legal limit.
- The evacuation flights from Dubai and Riyadh in March 2026 were paid in advance, which is contrary to the Public Procurement Law, which stipulates that the maximum amount of the advance can be up to 20% of the contract value.
3. Tender of Municipality of Chair: The school swimming pool in Chair, worth 890 thousand euros, for 6 months was completed only on paper.
- Although the Municipality of Chair submitted a notification to the Electronic Public Procurement System on November 21, 2025 that the contract for the construction of an indoor swimming pool in the “Ismail Qemali” Primary School was 100% completed, the facility was only officially launched six months later.
You can read the research in Macedonian, Albanian and English language
For more information, please contact the Center for Civil Communications at (02) 3213-513 or at center@ccc.org.mk.
The research was conducted within the framework of the project “Public Oversight of Public Procurement”, with financial assistance from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Skopje.