MN: Hungarian secretary of state has 5M dollars in a secret bank account in Belize

According to Magyar Nemzet, Secretary of State for Development, Climate Policy and Priority Public Services in the Ministry of National Development, Zsolt Szabó and his wife own an offshore company registered in Belize. MN acquired some papers regarding this company. According to these, Mr Szabó is the director of the firm which has more than 1.2 bn HUF in its bank account.

More skeletons from the closet

As we already reported, government members are under attack lately regarding their spending and luxurious travels. We wrote about deputy PM Zsolt Semjén’s luxurious hunting in Sweden HERE paid by a Hungarian businessman. Furthermore, one can reach our articles HERE on minister Lajos Kósa’s strange case. According to Magyar Nemzet, Gáborné Szabó

entrusted the minister to buy government bonds for 4.3 bn EUR.

Moreover, Mrs Szabó wanted to transfer 2.63M EUR to the bank account of Kósa’s mother which the minister thought about as his success fee.

Friday’s Magyar Nemzet wrote about Joy World Enterprise Limited, a company registered in Belize in 2013. According to the documents MN acquired

secretary of state Zsolt Szabó is the director of the company and he owns it with his wife.

Furthermore, the firm has more than 1.2 bn HUF (3.86M EUR) in its bank account. A local notary public, Aldo G. Reyes even proved that the documents acquired by MN are real. One of the family businesses of Szabó Exact-Cont Kft. is registered to the same address in Hatvan as the one that can be found in the papers – added MN.

The annual account service fee for Joy World Enterprise Limited is 300 dollars. However, this sum was not paid in 2018, so the almost 5M dollars in the account have been frozen.

MN tried to reach Szabó, but he reacted only after the Friday’s issue appeared. He posted a press release that day on his Facebook page in which

he denied that he either directs or owns the offshore company, which has such big sums on its account.

Mayor, PM and secretary of state

Szabó highlighted that the story is nothing else than former government oligarch Lajos Simicska’s and Jobbik’s organised attack to discredit him. He added that he or his wife do not own the offshore company registered in Hatvan. Finally, he announced that he would report the issue and accuse all media that accused him with such charges.

In fact,

Zsolt Szabó is one of the most influential people of Heves county.

He has many companies and became a representative of Hatvan’s local council and an MP with Fidesz-support in 2006. Because of that, he had to resign as a mayor in 2014 to keep his seat in the parliament. Then he became a member of the government as Secretary of State for Development, Climate Policy and Priority Public Services.

His friend, Richárd Horváth was elected as mayor of Hatvan after that. However, Szabó did not entirely trust him, so his former Head of Cabinet, Csaba Tóth remained in position. Later Horváth fired Tóth. Thus, the local Fidesz-group got divided, but the majority of them continued to support Horváth.

Since Szabó lost his support in Hatvan,

he did not allow the city to get any money

from the Territorial and Settlement Development Operative Program which he controlled as secretary of state. In contrast, the mayors of the neighbouring villages loyal to him got billions from the program. Even János Lázár, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office condemned this conduct in a Governmentinfo. In fact, he tried to appease them in February, but he did not manage to do so.

Featured image: mti.hu

Source: mno.hu, hvg.hu, Daily News Hungary