The Main Public Prosecutor’s Office for Prosecuting Organized Crime and Corruption (PPO-OCC) informs about the procedures that have been completed, i.e. a final verdict for lawyer Fehmi Stafa, as well as a new indictment for the former Skopje Appellate Court Judge Gjoko Ristov, in whose family house in Negotino EUR 350,000 were found bricked up behind a kitchen wall.
The PPO-OCC concluded that it had provided all the evidence that the lawyer Fehmi Stafa requested a total of EUR 100,000, and on 13.12.2025 he directly received an amount of EUR 20,000 to mediate with a judge from the Skopje Court of Appeals to lift a detention order imposed on a person who was then inaccessible to law enforcement agencies. In fact, this is the arrested judge Gjoko Ristov.
“Faced with the evidence of the prosecution, the defendant fully admitted and accepted the allegations in the indictment, after which he requested to agree on the amount of the criminal sanction.
By accepting the proposed agreement, the convicted person has now confirmed the allegations in the indictment according to which the requested money was intended to influence a specific judge from the Skopje Appellate Court by bribery in order to obtain the lifting of a detention measure,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office-OCC noted.
Although in this specific case the lawyer was caught ‘in flagrante’ with part of the bribe and that money did not reach the judge, the public prosecutor also conducted other searches with which on January 18, 2026, in the home of the judge’s parents in Negotino, he found a total of 350,000 euros, the origin of which he has no proof of and did not report,” reads the statement.
Based on all the evidence, the PPO-OCC filed an indictment Friday against Judge Gjoko Ristov.
