Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar has strongly defended the newly established National Office for Asset Recovery and Asset Protection (NVVH), accusing those who seek to undermine or discredit its work of opposing efforts to recover allegedly stolen public assets.
In a video posted on Facebook on Friday, Magyar said the new authority should certainly be criticised and scrutinised, and that its performance should be held to account. However, he argued that anyone who weakens, discredits or obstructs its work for political reasons is deliberately causing harm.
His comments came after the Hungarian Parliament elected Anna Unger as the NVVH’s president and Katalin Tasnádi as deputy president responsible for investigations.
Magyar: The new office must be judged by its results
Addressing supporters of the governing Tisza Party, Magyar said it was “extremely unfair and unjust” to question the commitment of MPs or government members to political change simply because of the parliamentary decision concerning the leadership of the new office.
According to the prime minister, those who genuinely support political change and want an effective asset recovery authority should judge its leadership based on its future actions and results. Magyar also insisted that the selection process had been professional and transparent.
He said he had recently spoken by telephone with Miklós Ligeti, legal director of Transparency International Hungary and one of the candidates considered for the position.
“He confirmed to me that he also considered the procedure constitutional, lawful and fair,” Magyar said.
The prime minister also urged public figures, including former MPs and former government officials, to reconsider their criticism of the authority and its newly appointed leadership.
“Those who try to trip up those responsible for recovering public assets right at the starting line will later find it difficult to explain whose interests they were actually serving,” Magyar said.
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‘The biggest Hungarian economic crimes ever seen’
Magyar described Tasnádi as one of Hungary’s best-prepared prosecutors and said her task would be to investigate what he called “the biggest Hungarian economic crimes ever seen” and identify those responsible. The prime minister also said the government wanted to speed up criminal proceedings.
He argued that it was unacceptable for criminal cases to take five to ten years to conclude and said the government would submit every necessary legislative amendment to Parliament to shorten the time required for investigations, prosecutions and court proceedings.
The NVVH is intended to play a central role in one of the Tisza Party’s key political pledges: recovering public assets that the government alleges were improperly taken and ensuring that those responsible face consequences.
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NVVH leaders to receive 24-hour police protection
Magyar also highlighted the risks associated with investigating organised economic crime. He said that fighting and investigating the “mafia” was among the most dangerous tasks and confirmed that the leaders of the new authority would receive 24-hour personal protection from the police.
Magyar condemns Fidesz comparison with the ÁVH
The prime minister also sharply criticised the opposition Fidesz party for comparing the NVVH with the ÁVH, Hungary’s communist-era State Protection Authority. Magyar called the comparison “despicable” and said it was a shameful insult to the memory of the ÁVH’s victims and the legacy of the 1956 revolution.
He said he was not surprised that Fidesz was attacking the new authority and its leadership with what he described as low-level political tactics, claiming that the party had “plundered this wonderful country” over the past 16 years.
As a result, he argued, its representatives had something to fear and something to lose from effective asset recovery.
Magyar called on members of the public not to fall for what he described as personal and hurtful provocations. Instead, he urged Hungarians to support those taking on the task of recovering public assets and to defend them against what he called attacks without any factual basis.
‘Now something will happen’
Concluding his video, Magyar wished the new authority’s current and future employees success. “Work bravely, work freely,” he said, adding that he hoped that in a few years no Hungarian would again have to say, as people had so often said in previous decades, that “nothing ever happens in this country”.
“Because now something will happen,” the prime minister concluded.
