Authorities do not let a Hungarian woman travel home from Egypt

A Hungarian woman is a suspect in a big international money laundering case. She wanted to travel home, but there was an international warrant against her, so authorities did not allow her to fly back to Budapest. Interestingly, she is free to move anywhere in the African country even though her extradition is currently in progress.

“I wanted to travel home this summer, but at the airport, authorities apprehended me”, she recalled. Blikk.hu said the woman wanted to preserve her anonymity, claiming that she has a unique name and does not want her family and children to get in trouble because of her. “They told me I was on the list of Interpol, and they took me away and placed me into custody until my extradition. First, for 15 days, then they lengthened that time again.”

The Hungarian woman is a suspect in a big international money laundering case. Based on a June court decision, ten of her alleged accomplices are already behind bars, serving sentences between 2 and 8 years in prison. The amount of money concerned is brutal high: HUF 18 billion (EUR 42.5 million).

Police started to investigate back in 2006. They found an international criminal organisation involved in the drug trade and money laundering, having tentacles in Colombia, the USA, Europe and Asia. They found a Hungarian thread leading to a Vietnamese national who lived in Budapest at that time. His task was to hide the revenues coming from the drug deals.

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As mentioned before, ten of the woman’s alleged accomplices are already in prison. She is the only one who did not receive a sentence yet. She said she wanted to come home to serve her prison sentence and spend time with her family after that. The Egyptian police let her free after the 2X15 days ended as she did not commit anything in their country. Furthermore, she had Egyptian relatives. As a result, she could leave the police station as a free person.

“But I cannot get out of Egypt. When the police released me, they said I was in the border police register. Therefore, I cannot leave. The extradition procedure may take long, my lawyer says, because they must translate the documents the Hungarian authorities sent. Then the Hungarians must translate the papers the Egyptians send back. I do not know how long I have to stay here”, she added.

The Budapest Regional Court of Appeal told Blikk they were organising the woman’s extradition process with the Ministry of Justice and the International Law Enforcement Cooperation Centre. First, the Egyptian authorities wanted to deport the Hungarian woman, but later they changed their mind. Now they would extradite her, which takes longer, the court added.