Hungary’s biggest language exam fraud exposed

Monor City Court convicted a total number of 122 defendants for bribery offences, acceptance of bribery and forgery of administrative documents. According to the non-binding judgment, the fraudsters sold the exam solutions to their clients for a price ranging from HUF 150,000 (~EUR 430) to HUF 800,000 (~EUR 2296) per exam.

The prosecutor’s office laid charges in bribery, acceptance of bribery and other crimes, writes hvg. The court rendered judgement after 62 trial days, finding a total of 6,800 counts of crimes in the case of the first twenty defendants.

There have been other cases of language exam bribery before; for example, in 2002, a criminal group specialised in obtaining language exam certificates through bribery, among other crimes. This organisation targeted individuals who were in need of a language exam certificate in English or German to earn their degree or to get a job. Through the employees working in different language schools in Pest county and Budapest, the fraudsters had access to the exam tasks sheets and the answers. With this method, the criminal group was able to guarantee successful language exams for their clients for more than a decade.

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In the present case, based on the evidence, the court found one of the defendants guilty of accepting bribery in the first degree and therefore sentenced this person to 2 years of imprisonment. Still, this sentence was suspended for three years. The defendant also has to pay a fine and is permanently disqualified from the practice of conducting language exams, 24.hu explained.

Another 19 defendants were sentenced to a term of imprisonment from18 to 24 months for bribery, acceptance of bribery, trading in influence, complicity in forgery of administrative documents and incitement to commit trading in influence. The sentence also includes the confiscation of the proceeds of crime and paying a fine.

Most clients were students who needed a language exam certificate to earn their degree and employees who wanted to receive an allowance for their language exam certificate. The defendants usually collected a larger team of clients and gave the correct answers in advance or placed these people in a separate room. The tariffs ranged from HUF 150,000 (~EUR 430) to HUF 800,000 (~EUR 2296) per exam.

This is why Hungarians do not really speak foreign languages

Featured image: illustration

Source: 24.hu, hvg.hu