A journalist with the UK’s national broadcaster the BBC is aiming to “reform” Macedonia’s media by applying for a grant from controversial USAID, the US government’s official aid agency

Ms Rachel Wright was in Skopje, the Macedonian capital last week, when she was spotted by chance at the luxurious Marriott Hotel. She was waiting in the lobby to meet with local Macedonian journalists to put a team together in order to bid for a USAID grant. see link here

TEAM UZUNOV blog broke a story last year after a highly placed British source, unhappy with US foreign policy, leaked a number of USAID emails showing the deep involvement of the US government in funding activists groups to attack so called Macedonian nationalism but remaining silent on Albanian extremism, in particular World War II Albanian Nazi collaborator statues. see link here 

Ms Wright told TEAM UZUNOV she does not agree with the criticism of USAID.

“I’m a BBC journalist trying to help a country [Macedonia] that has a rather over-populated and under-skilled media landscape with a high level of misinformation and corruption,” she said.

She was involved in producing a documentary about the highly politicised and controversial Special Public Prosecutor (SJO) set up in Macedonia under European Union pressure – link here

At the same time that Ms Wright was in the Marriott Hotel, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz walked past her in the lobby and into the bar to meet with local Albanian nationalist politicians Ali Ahmeti, Artan Grubi, Teuta Arifi and the controversial Nevzat Bejta who has built World War II Albanian Nazi collaborator statues in Macedonia post 2001 conflict. see link here

Chancellor Kurz later declined to comment on Bejta’s Nazi statue building projects.

MARRIOTT HOTEL – the place to be seen !

Also passing through the lobby was Christian Mickovski, the leader of Macedonia’s main Opposition party, VMRO-DPMNE, who hugged Ahmeti who was on his way to meet with Kurz.