On 7 June 2016, the Ministry of Interior conducted a police operation at the faculty of economics at the University of St Cyril and Methodius located in Skopje and identified a number of employees at the faculty as suspects of bribery.

On 7 October 2016, after about four months of police investigation under the code name Erasmus, prosecutors filed charges against several individuals. Bobek Shuklev, a professor and former dean, and Slave Ristovski, also a professor, were accused of exploiting their positions and accepting bribes. Professor Dragi Janev was charged with the criminal act under the Macedonian criminal code of accepting bribes and receiving a reward for illegal influence. Additionally, professor Stojan Debarliev was accused of abuse of an official position and authority while Dragan Denkovski, an assistant, faced charges of giving bribes under the criminal code.

According to the indictment, in the period between 2015 and 2016, the accused abused their official positions to directly or indirectly solicit monetary contributions from students, ranging from €500 to €1,000, in exchange for grades they did not merit. There were documented instances of students receiving passing grades despite not having registered for the exam at all.

The bribery scheme was constructed so that, in some cases, the owner of the café located within the faculty collected money directly from the students to be handed over to the assistant, who then delivered it to the professors. Besides monetary contributions, the prosecution presented evidence of sexual extortion involving the accused professors Shuklev and Janev who, in addition to money, requested sexual favours from female students in exchange for higher grades.

The first trial for this case commenced on 30 January 2017 and lasted until 9 March 2020 when the first-instance verdict was announced with all but professor Stojan Debarliev found guilty. On 29 June 2021, the court of appeals in Skopje returned the Erasmus case for a retrial, stating that the professors were not public officials but performed activities of public interest. The trial recommenced and, during that period, one of the accused professors, Dragi Janev, passed away.

The retrial ended on 7 September 2023 with sentences being announced. Shuklev, the former dean, received a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence, which professor Ristevski received four years, and the assistant Denkovski a two-year alternative sentence of conditional imprisonment. All convicted men received a five-year ban from practicing in academia.