Macedonian transporters have been advertising the private Invest.com website this past decade for free, after a supposed mix up regarding the campaign “Invest in Macedonia”. While the campaign was popular during the tenure of the country’s previous government, Invest.com is a site of a Cypriot currency trading company, and has no connections whatsoever with InvestInMacedonia.gov.mk.
Starting in 2015 and until mid-2017, Invest.com stickers were mandatory for all trucks, vans and buses registered in North Macedonia. These same vehicles would later be driven throughout the region and Europe, and the stickers were meant to showcase the country as the ideal investment destination.
The domain Invest.com was never owned by any Macedonian institution or company. It has never been part of any campaign, not excluding the ‘Invest in North Macedonia’ campaign, formerly known as ‘Invest In Macedonia’.
The domain is the property of the Cypriot company PRODIGIT INVESTMENTS LTD, registered since 2012. According to the information from the corporate register of Cyprus, no Macedonian citizens appears to be in a managerial capacity.
Some of the representatives of the Macedonian transporters thought at the time that the whole ordeal wasn’t a mix up, but rather “selling a website and a scheme that should have been implemented by the lower echelons of that government”.
However, given the fact of state of the country’s digital transformation and knowing that the most important government website ‘vlada.mk’ has been hacked for 2 years, it is hard to believe that it’s all part of a scheme and organized manipulation. It is more likely that it is a rookie mistake that simply got overlooked during the preparation process. Then, there are also the decades of unwillingness of the transporters and the state to accept responsibility.
IT.mk has sent a request for a comment from the Agency for Foreign Investments, and are yet to receive a reply.
Good idea, bad implementation
The mandatory obligation to promote the domain was first published in the Official Gazette no. 160 on October 31, 2014. In it, it clearly specifies the nature and the location of the message that needs to be on each transport vehicle. The official gazette, however, lists the correct domain InvestInMacedonia.com, along with the dimensions of the stickers.
The obligation stemmed from the Law on road transport. In 2017, this became a mandatory obligation of carriers.
The goal of the campaign, according to the Government, was to use the stickers to spread a message about investing in North Macedonia, as a form of a guerilla marketing campaign that’s meant to promote the Agency for Foreign Investments, the state and investment opportunities.
To this day, most of the transporters have stickers for Invest.com – a domain which, whether due to someone’s mistake or some “genius marketing plan”, ended up on the Macedonian transporters. For years, transporters have been advertising the domain not only throughout the country, but also all over Europe.
Tankers of the largest Macedonian oil company Oilko also take part in the ‘initiative’.
To this day, it remains a mystery how the advertisements for Invest.com ended on Macedonian transporters.
InvestInMacedonia.com promotes thai online casino
The domain InvestInMacedonia.com has become infamous due to the many government campaigns to promote the country as an ideal opportunity for foreign investment.
However, if you were to open the investinmacedonia.com domain today, you would visit a site for a Thai online casino. Obviously, the domain is no longer in the service of the Agency for Foreign Investments, or if it is (due to private registration data, the owner is not known), the domain may have been hacked.
The Agency for Foreign Investments is active since 2005. At the beginning, the agency used the domain InvestInMacedonia.com. Now, however, it uses the domains invest.gov.mk and investinnorthmacedonia.gov.mk.
The InvestInMacedonia.com domain has been building a reputation for years (it has a domain authority of 47); it was also used for official business emails. The biggest and most obvious omission is that the domain does not redirect to the new invest.gov.mk domains. To this day, it simply leads to a website for a Thai casino.
InvestInMacedonia.com is still referenced on government and media sites; even all emails on the contact list of economic promoters of the Chamber of Commerce are with the domain investinmacedonia.com. You will come across the domain on the private Twitter profiles such as the former Minister of Foreign Investments, Gligor Tashkovic.
Even if the reason for moving from the domain is due to the policy imposed by the Prespa Agreement between North Macedonia and Greece, a redirect to the new sites would still be the best option. And, in case you were wondering, investinnorthmacedonia.com is not yet registered and is up for sale.
In addition, there are the trucks, tankers and vans with visible advertisements that you can see on the Macedonian roads.
While we are at it, we would also like to make an appeal: – if you happen to spot a vehicle with Invest.com while on Macedonian and foreign roads, send us pictures and we will happily add them to our growing collection.
