Hungarian politicians securing positions with huge salaries for the rest of their lives?

The trustees of foundations performing public service tasks cannot be replaced, so they could hold the position with a salary of thousands of euros for the rest of their lives. There are quite a few politicians among them. 24.hu wrote an article about them.

Conflict of interest rules were amended to allow politicians to take positions in foundations

More than a dozen pro-government politicians receive a fee of around one million forints (€2,600) per month, among other remuneration, for being a trustee on the board of a foundation.

These foundations were established over the past two years thanks to the government’s two-thirds majority, and conflict of interest rules were amended last April to allow members of Parliament and local governments, mayors, and senior government officials to sit in boards of trustees.

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Some of the bigger names are:

• János Lázár, the former Secretary of State of the Prime Minister’s Office
• István Nagy, the Minister of Agriculture
• János Süli, the Minister responsible for the Paks 2 Nuclear Plant Development
• Sándor Lezsák, the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly
• Sándor Fazekas, the former Minister of Agriculture
• László György, the State Secretary for Economic Strategy
• Benő Péter Benai, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Finance

Their mandate is forever

It is not affected by either a change of government or a retirement age: they have designed this legal construct so that they cannot be removed from their post. In addition, some of the trustees are in their forties, so they may fill these positions with good pay and not too many tasks for decades.

If a member is to be eliminated for any reason, it is not the state but the members of the board of trustees that decide who can join them.

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Government-related foundations

To date, the government has set up more than thirty public service asset management foundations, to which more than HUF 1,000 billion in state assets have been outsourced.

The foundations have at least 250 board and supervisory board seats, most of which have been and are occupied by current politicians, government officials, and pro-government businessmen.

The cabinet could choose the format of the foundation so that the transferred assets could not be taken back even after a possible change of government.

And foundations have been given valuable real estate, including castles, resorts, stadiums, plots of land, and valuable stakes of shares that they are essentially free to manage, all they need to do is keep their assets above the minimum capital set out in the charter.

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Source: 24.hu