Macedonia’s former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said he has applied for political asylum in Hungary, the Beta news agency reported on Tuesday, after he failed to report to prison to serve a corruption sentence handed to him by a Macedonian court.

“I am in Budapest now, and I have asked Hungarian authorities for asylum,” Gruevski, who was Prime Minister of Macedonia from 2006 to 2016, posted on his Facebook profile.

He added that he had received a number of death threats over the past few days.

Gruevski (48) had been sentenced in May to two years in prison by a Macedonian court for illegally buying a luxury Mercedes car worth €600,000 during his term in office. His passport was seized in 2017.

Macedonian police had issued a warrant for his arrest on Monday after he failed to report to prison to start serving his sentence.  

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