CEDH · CASELAW;COMMUNICATEDCASES;ENG — 2 février 2026

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .s379BC09C { margin-top:36pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s5E1364CA { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:14pt } .s339D85E6 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:14pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s665E407E { margin-top:66pt; margin-bottom:14pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s10950C61 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:14.2pt; text-align:justify } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .sA1D3DA2E { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify } Published on 23 February 2026   SECOND SECTION Application no. 41150/21 Sead KOCHAN against North Macedonia lodged on 11 August 2021 communicated on 2 February 2026 SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE The application concerns criminal proceedings against the applicant, the manager of construction company T., in which he was convicted for abuse of public procurement procedure for excavation of coal. The background to the case is similar to that in Taleski and Others v. North Macedonia ((dec.), nos.   77796/17 and five other applications, §§ 4-8, 24 January 2023). On 29 June 2017 the Special Prosecutor for the prosecution of cases related to and arising from the content of the unlawful interception of communications (“the SPO”) filed an indictment against the applicant and two other individuals, as well as against company T. and two other companies, alleging that they had breached the public procurement rules by submitting fictitious documents regarding the technical and staffing capacity of the companies (that applied as a consortium led by company T.) to the public procurement bid. As a result, the consortium qualified for the next selection round where they won the public contract. Among other evidence, the indictment relied on three audio-recordings of intercepted conversations. On 29 September 2017 a three-judge panel of the Skopje Court of First Instance dismissed the applicant’s objection to the indictment, finding that the audio-recordings had been validated as evidence by the Act which had established the SPO, and they were thus to be considered as lawfully obtained evidence. According to the applicant, in previous proceedings against other persons such evidence had been excluded as inadmissible by that court. At the hearing held on 22 December 2017, the three audio-recordings were adduced as evidence, despite the objections of the defence that they had not been made available to them on a data storage device beforehand to be able to test their authenticity through an expert. The trial court considered the transcripts of the audio-recordings, which were provided to the defence at that hearing, as sufficient to safeguard the equality of arms between the parties. It further held that the CD-ROM with the audio-recordings, which was part of the court’s casefile and thus available to the defence beforehand, could not be given to the defence. At the hearing held on 14 June 2018, the SPO proposed ten different audio-recordings of the intercepted conversations as additional evidence to rebut the defence and gave the defence transcripts of those recordings. At the next hearing held on 3 July 2018, those audio-recordings were adduced as evidence, despite objections by the defence that it had been placed at a disadvantage due to the exclusive control of the SPO over the audio materials originating from the intercepted conversations and its discretion in selecting the recordings that were proposed as evidence. The trial court was satisfied that the defence, having received the transcripts of these recordings at the previous hearing, had had sufficient time to prepare. On 20 July 2018 the Skopje Court of First Instance convicted the applicant, the second defendant and two of the companies, while the third defendant was acquitted and the charges against the third company were withdrawn. Relying on the audio-recordings of the intercepted conversations, where high-ranking officials from the government and the public enterprise discussed the impugned procurement, it established that the defendants acted knowingly to obtain pecuniary gain. It further relied on the companies’ accounting records and other documents, as well as financial expert reports, to establish the fictitious content of certain documents submitted by the defendants at the public procurement bid. The applicant was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment and a three-year ban on acting as manager in a company was imposed. On 11 March 2019 the Skopje Court of Appeal reduced the applicant’s prison sentence to four years and eight months. On 23 September 2020 the Supreme Court dismissed the applicant’s requests for extraordinary review of a final judgment, finding that the audio-recordings had been lawfully obtained evidence by the SPO, they had been played at the trial and the defence had been able to challenge their authenticity and use. The applicant first received a copy of this judgment on 12 February 2021. Subsequently, the judgment was again served on him on 31 August 2021, due to a lack of proof of receipt. The applicant complains under Article 6   §   1 of the Convention that: (i) he was convicted, in violation of the principle of legal certainty, on the basis of unlawfully obtained audio-recordings; (ii) the principle of adversarial trial was breached because the audio-recordings were not made available to the defence and he was not able to challenge their authenticity with an expert report; (iii) the principle of equality of arms was breached because only the SPO had access to all the audio-recordings originating from the intercepted conversations, which may have included evidence favouring the defence, and there had been no legal procedure to challenge the selection of evidence by the SPO. QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES 1.     Did the applicant have a fair hearing in the determination of the criminal charges against him, in accordance with Article 6 §   1 of the Convention? In particular:   (a) did he have a fair hearing, in view of the circumstances in which the audio-recordings from the allegedly unlawfully intercepted communications, used in evidence in the proceedings, were obtained and the applicant’s alleged lack of opportunity to challenge their authenticity (see, for the relevant principles, Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Türkiye [GC], no. 15669/20, §§ 302-4, 26 September 2023)?   (b) were the principles of the adversarial nature of proceedings and equality of arms observed with regard to the disclosure to the defence of the evidence possessed by the prosecution (ibid, §§ 307-8)?