Budapest mayor urges publication of OLAF report on metro 4

Budapest (MTI) – Budapest Mayor István Tarlós on Tuesday called for the publication of the European Anti-fraud Office OLAF’s report concerning suspected corruption involved in the construction of Budapest’s fourth metro line and told commercial radio Inforadio that he did not understand why there was a dispute and why OLAF was not making the report public.

He said he had received the report from the Prime Minister’s Office. The government and the city management share the same view about it, he added.

He said he did not understand why there was “a slightly artificial dispute about making it public”. The government has received the report with the warning that it was obliged to respect the European Union’s rules on data protection. He added that if OLAF cannot make its report public then why does it pass it on with the “threat” that “you can make it public if you want, but you may have problems if you violate any data protection rules”.

Tarlós said he had received letters from the data protection autority and the Prime Minister’s Office informing him that he might get into extended lawsuits with multinationals if he makes the report public despite the warnings.

He said he would most welcome “this game to come to an end” because it only gives an opportunity for obfuscation by those that make guesses and present theories “out of political motivation or fear”.

Tarlós earlier said that in the document, OLAF listed 78 instances in the metro project in which criminal activities were suspected and all but one had been committed before 2010.

Photo: Daily News Hungary

Source: MTI