Police at a border crossing on Monday seized former Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi – who has been a fugitive from justice for more than one year, accused of corruption.
Sinisa Jakov Marusic
Police at a border crossing on Monday seized former Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi – who has been a fugitive from justice for more than one year, accused of corruption.
North Macedonia’s former First Vice Prime Minister, Artan Grubi. Archive photo: vlada.mk
Former First Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi, who has been on the run for more than a year, was detained early on Monday morning after appearing at the Blace border crossing between Kosovo and North Macedonia.
North Macedonia’s Interior Ministry said that it apprehended Grubi right at the entry point, as he was “wanted with an international arrest warrant [related to] investigation of a crime”.
Grubi, First Deputy Prime Minister from 2020 to 2024 and Minister for the Political System and Inter-Community Relations, from the now opposition ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, had been at large since December 2024.
He vanished just as the prosecution named him as one of the suspects for the embezzlement of more than 8 million euros from the state-run lottery. He was reportedly hiding either in neighbouring Kosovo or in Albania.
He vanished also soon after, on December 9 that year, the US State Department added his name and that of Judge Enver Behxheti to its blacklist “for their involvement in significant corruption by accepting bribes to undermine judicial processes tied to the criminal conviction of Saso Mijalkov”, the former head of North Macedonia’s secret police.
Grubi denied the US allegations and announced his retirement from politics.
Grubi was a top figure in North Macedonia’s politics for over a decade before 2024. He was seen as an unofficial right-hand man to longstanding DUI leader Ali Ahmeti – and was even seen as his possible successor at one time.
