Swiss NGO Fund audit on potential abuse of funds starts

Budapest, December 16 (MTI) – The Prime Minister’s Office has started an audit into the Swiss NGO Fund to reveal a potential abuse of funds, business daily Napi Gazdasag said on Tuesday, citing information from the organisations that distribute funds.

The Hungarian Environmental Partnership Foundation (Okotárs – HEPF), acting in cooperation with the Autonomia Foundation, Foundation for Development of Democratic Rights (DemNet) and the Carpathian Foundation – Hungary, informed NGOs that had won funding from the Swiss Fund that the government control office Kehi called on the Prime Minister’s Office to carry out the audit. Kehi suspects that the consortium of foundations, which distributes 1.3 billion forints (EUR 4.22m), submitted its expense invoices to both the Swiss-Hungarian NGO Fund and the Norway NGO Fund.

The foundations said they were willing to cooperate with the authorities carrying out the audit but deny any wrongdoing, stating that any irregularities had only resulted from administrative mistakes, their communication cited by the paper shows.

The audit by the Prime Minister’s Office will take not more than 45 days and during this time the NGOs will not be getting the monies they have won, the paper said. Nearly 30 projects have awaited their next instalment of funding since August 11 and dozens of them had to be suspended, it added.

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