Police launch investigation into Quaestor

Budapest (MTI) – The Hungarian police have launched an investigation of brokerage Quaestor on suspicion of fraud, the National Police Headquarters told MTI on Wednesday.

Quaestor’s headquarters was raided as a part of the investigation, the police said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Socialist Party said that clients of brokerages affected by the difficulties should be fully compensated and the people responsible for the losses should publicly declare their personal assets. Jozsef Tobias, the party’s leader, told a news conference held in front of the central bank’s headquarters that the most important tasks ahead were to compensate clients for their losses and restore trust in the financial system.

Zsolt Molnar, head of Parliament’s national security committee, requested urgent information from relevant authorities concerning national security risks around brokerage companies that have recently gone bankrupt.

The ruling Fidesz party said that Hungary’s left-wing parties represented the interests of the fraudster brokerage firms. In a statement referring to the Buda-Cash and the Quaestor affairs, the party’s parliamentary group said it was senseless for the Socialists to try to deny responsibility, since during their time in government nothing had been done to prevent the decade-long financial corruption, and “they even introduced laws and appointed brokers to government positions to help them”.

“The left-wing has a thousand ties to the network of companies around Buda-Cash, with people associated with the Socialists, DK, Egyutt and PM sitting in these companies,” the statement added. The owner of the Quaestor group maintained good relations in the Gyurcsany-Bajnai governments before 2010, the statement said. The ruling party expects the people who run these companies to be held responsible and their personal assets should be freed up to compensate clients who suffered losses, it added.

Bence Tuzson, spokesman for Fidesz’s parliamentary group, called the Quaestor affair “another Socialist broker scandal” and pledged his party’s protection for all those “that have investment in Hungary”. Referring to a “desperate Leftist attempt to shun responsibility”, he said that the investigations would identify the perpetrators and added that “those responsible for the situation” will have to “pay those funds back to the hard-working depositors”.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters