Budapest committee for Alstom case to hear former Socialist city leaders

Budapest, May 24 (MTI) – The ad-hoc committee planned by the Budapest municipal assembly to investigate corruption allegations connected to French company Alstom’s Budapest metro contract will have powers to hear former decision-makers, including senior Socialist city officials, daily Magyar Idők said on Tuesday.

The committee will be set up within one or two weeks at the next meeting of the Budapest assembly and according to the paper it will be composed of two mayors representing the ruling parties and one representing an opposition party.

The committee will be helped by an administrative officer tasked with preparing documents and files related to the case, the paper said.

The committee is set to hear leftist deputies of the municipality, among them Socialist Csaba Horváth, whose task as former Budapest deputy mayor was to oversee affairs of Budapest Transport Company BKV from 2008. It plans to also hear Erzsébet Gy Németh who was the then ruling Socialists’ Budapest leader and is now a deputy for the Democratic Coalition, the paper said.

In late April Fidesz group leader Lajos Kósa told a press conference that years ago the UK’s Serious Fraud Office launched investigations into four Alstom executives for alleged corruption. The SFO alleged that they had transferred 2.3 million euros to BKV for preferential treatment in the bids to supply the carriages for the city’s fourth metro line.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters