Senior officials in Orban’s government under investigation for billions of missing EU funds?

The call for the return of the missing money comes as Orbán’s successor, Péter Magyar, tries to convince Brussels that the country is ready to receive more than 10 billion euros of frozen EU money due to rule of law concerns.

Ferenc Pál Biró, president of the Hungarian Integrity Agency, said “high-ranking politicians can and will be prosecuted” for their involvement in an alleged scheme to systematically defraud European taxpayers during Orbán’s 16-year rule.

He said his team had “identified a number of criminal cases where I personally believe that as a country we should be … in a position to recover those funds and repatriate those funds because most of them have already left the country.” He did not make specific accusations against Orbán or other members of his inner circle. Orbán and his Fidesz party did not respond to requests for comment.

The Hungarian Integrity Authority, established in 2022 as part of reforms pushed through by Brussels, monitors the spending and security of EU funds. He is independent of the government and is likely to be responsible for helping to dismantle the crony networks created during the Orbán years that span everything from construction to utilities and the media. The Bureau has been in charge of the supervisory body since its inception.

According to the watchdog, three companies were awarded the majority of government contracts for the provision of goods and services, with the amount charged for these contracts being artificially inflated. Biró said that the government spent about 10 billion euros with these three firms in the last four years. He did not name the companies involved.

– The overestimation, which we believe is subject to the risk of corruption… would amount to 3.5 billion euros – he said, adding that tenders for public procurement were “manipulated” and that basic items were charged at several times higher than the market price. Under the previous government, the Hungarian state “became the largest entity on the market,” he said.

Magyar, who was sworn in in May after a landslide election victory a month earlier, has repeatedly accused his predecessor of corruption.

The Hungarian government did not respond to requests for comment.

(Vijesti.ba / FENA)