Hungary’s new National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office (NVVH) is tasked with protecting public assets, investigating suspected misuse of state property and helping recover unlawfully acquired public wealth. The relevant legistlation establishing the new body was accepted by the Parliament in July and the body’s head is to be chosen by the National Assembly this Friday. Then the institution’s charter will be accepted in September, so the work can begin.
Hungary’s “almighty” National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH) is set to start its work soon, but first the Hungarian Parliament must choose its head. There are three top contestants whose hearing took place today in the Hungarian Parliament’s Justice ad Constitutional Affairs Committee.
Miklós Ligeti: no witch hunt
The accountability not pursued in 1990 must finally be achieved, Miklós Zoltán Ligeti, the legal director of Transparency International Hungary, told the justice and constitutional affairs committee of parliament on Tuesday during his hearing as a nominee for the head of the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH). He added that while asset recovery and accountability must begin, the office itself must be established first.
NVVVH’s mandate will not be limited to the past 16 years. “It is not a NER-purging office,” he said, referring to the moniker “system of national cooperation” of the Orbán regime. A legal procedure cannot be turned into a witch hunt, he added. Ligeti emphasised that the new authority must cooperate with many other bodies in the fight against corruption. Without this, the entire process is doomed to fail, he said.
In response to a question, Ligeti stressed that the primary goal is to restore public trust in the state. On the risk of political retribution, he said he did not see why this office should be feared more than any other authority.
Anna Róza Unger: developing an immune system
The first six-year mandate of the leader of the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH) will suffice to uncover “what happened in this country“, but the cases are not expected to end in binding sentences within that period, political scientist Anna Róza Unger said before parliament’s judicial and constitutional affairs committee on Tuesday.
Unger, who is vying for the position of head of the NVVH, said the mandate will be enough to launch the procedures “to bring everyone responsible, be it a big man or a small one, a city mouse or a country one, before the court.” This would go for “all who committed it, those who allowed [crimes] to be committed, and for Hungarian society to grasp and learn what had happened so it can never happen again,” she said.
The NVVH will work to map the system that created and operated corruption rather than to unveil concrete cases, she said, “so that the newly forming Hungarian democracy may develop an immune system which, after a period of consolidation, makes re-occurrence impossible,” Unger said.
Nicholas Sárvári: NVVH ‘must become rule of law’
Hungary’s Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH) “should become an integral part of the rule of law“, Nicholas Sárvári, the Tisza Party’s nominee to head the new organisation, said in parliament’s judicial committee on Tuesday.
Sárvári noted that the structure of the authority was defined by law, and said that as its head he would “find the right experts for each task“. The candidate suggested that the way public assets had been handled in Hungary in previous years was “unacceptable“, adding that he felt “ashamed as a Hungarian“. Restoring public trust and building transparency will be one of the main tasks of the new authority, he added.
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Former PM Orbán’s party does not take part in the procedure
The Hungarian Parliament is expected to elect NVVH’s leader on Friday and adopt its charter during the autumn session, with the authority expected to be set up later in the season.
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ), the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the K-Monitor Public Benefit Association and the World Federation of Hungarians were represented at the meeting in a consultative capacity.
Former government party and main opposition party Fidesz and its ally, KDNP did not send their MPs to the hearing.
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