Hungarian armed forces’ weapon sales to be put on parliament national security, defence committees
Budapest, December 3 (MTI) – Parliament’s national security and defence committees will put the issue of the Hungarian armed forces’ weapon sales on their meetings’ agenda next week and demand explanation, Zsolt Molnar, the head of the national security committee, said on Thursday.
A spokesman for the opposition Dialogue for Hungary (PM) party said earlier this week that a hunting shop in Hungary had bought thousands of rocket-propelled weapons from the Hungarian armed forces.
Bence Tordai cited defence ministry contracts showing that in 2013 and 2014 the company had bought 1,357 air launched rockets, 83 nose guns and 52 airborne rockets from the Hungarian army for 7.5 million forints (EUR 24,000).
Under another contract, the company bought 501 armour-piercing missiles, 57 airborne rockets, 214 air-to-air rockets and 1,203 other rockets, as well as five moving-target locators, he added, without specifying the price of the contract.
The company probably generated hundreds of millions of forints in revenues from these transactions, Tordai said, adding that the missiles that were still usable were likely “flown out of the country through a no-name hunting shop to an unknown buyer”.
These weapons were past their life-cycle but could be made perfectly usable “for dictators in central Africa or a terrorist organisation in the Middle East”, he said. “Perhaps they are using them to attack NATO units in Syria,” Tordai added.
Since it involves “dangerous weapons,” the national security committee will expect to learn details about the sales’ national security implications including information about the stocks’ final destination and possible end-users at a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, Molnar told MTI.
It is important to know whether the weapons could have been possibly sold abroad and got into the hands of any oganised crime ring or a terrorist organisation, Molnar said.
He said the defence committee will expect to hear details from the defence ministry.
Government office chief Janos Lazar said the weapons sales complied with laws and regulations. He told a regular government news conference that the path of the sales can be easily traced and both the sellers and buyers had the necessary permits. He said decommissioned weapons are subject to “very strict regulations”.
Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters
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