The Skopje Basic Court sentenced owner of the DokazM news website Marjan Stamenkovski to three years and one month in prison. He was convicted of blackmail, piracy of an audiovisual work, dissemination of racist and xenophobic material through a computer system and misuse of personal data.
The accused has to pay a fine of 5,000 euros for the misuse of personal data. The court prohibited him from registering a domain or being the owner of a portal for the next 10 years, and the Dokaz website will also be taken down because Stamenkovski is its owner.
According to the verdict, Stamenkovski blackmailed an employee of the Customs Office to pay him money not to publish an article about him, after previously illegally wiretapping him. The threat was that he would announce that the customs employee had an illegitimate child.
He was also convicted of spreading xenophobic material based on religion, which he published about two journalists working for Fokus.mk and misused personal data of employees of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.