The hearing for the murder of Vanja Gjorchevska has been postponed because the lawyer of the primary defendant, Ljupcho Palevski – Palcho, was unable to attend due to health reasons. The court received notification from lawyer Jovica Strashevski this morning regarding his absence.

Palevski is the main suspect in the murders of both Vanja Gjorchevska and Panche Zhezovski. He was scheduled to continue answering questions from his lawyer at the hearing.

During the previous hearing, Palevski declared his innocence, claiming he was a victim of a court-orchestrated setup.

Palevski stated that he possessed a “Toshiba” hard drive containing over 200,000 phone conversations exposing corruption within the political elite and the journalistic profession. He argued that if his motive was financial gain, he could have blackmailed wealthy individuals.

He further stated that he had no motive for committing the crimes and described other defendants: Keshishev as politically uninformed but stable and patriotic; Manev as ambitious and greedy for money; Videvski as modest and disciplined and claimed to only know Gjorchevski’s name from the criminal report.

Palevski alleges that he is being framed for publishing information about money laundering of Iranian drone sale proceeds through Macedonian banks. He accused Gavril Bubevski and Oliver Spasovski of direct involvement in the money laundering scheme.

He also claimed that witness Goce Trajkovski sent screenshots of influencers and journalists to the police, and that Vanja is Palevski’s illegitimate daughter. He attributed the media’s negative portrayal of him to the policies of his party, Desna, which advocated for a referendum on Macedonian identity issues.

Palevski criticized the media for not highlighting the weapon allegedly used in the crime and suggested that the media’s stance was due to Desna’s initiative for a referendum on Bulgarian policy towards Macedonia.