Nearly 17,000 ventilators and documents that someone apparently tried to delete.
Hungary’s foreign ministry has filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors over possible fraud. This is related to the previous government’s purchase of ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic, Foreign Minister Anita Orbán announced.
The complaint centres on approximately 17,000 ventilators purchased from China in March and April 2020 under former PM Viktor Orbán’s government. All at a total cost of around $965 million. The purchase drew criticism at the time for the volume of units acquired. It far exceeded what could realistically be deployed. And also for paying significantly more per unit than other European countries.
“Breach of Fiduciary Duty”
Orbán, who is unrelated to the former PM, said the results of a ministry investigation had raised suspicions of “breach of fiduciary duty causing particularly substantial financial loss and other criminal offences.” She described an investigation involving tens of thousands of documents, some of which had to be recovered using digital tools “after unsuccessful attempts to delete them.” She also pointed to questions about the responsibility of the ministry’s former senior leadership.
A statement from the Hungarian government outlined further alleged irregularities. Most of the ventilators were purchased through intermediary companies whose revenues increased exponentially as a result of the transactions. Some units were defective. A significant proportion was never deployed, and storage costs for the unused devices ran into millions of dollars.
The case is deepening scrutiny of Hungary’s former foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, who oversaw the ventilator procurement. As well as the purchase of five million doses of the Chinese-produced Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine during his nearly twelve years in office. Last month, Szijjártó resigned from Parliament to take an executive role at Chinese automaker BYD. A move that prompted immediate accusations of a conflict of interest given his role in facilitating significant government subsidies to the company while still in office.
The Hungarian government has since launched a separate investigation into large BYD investments made in Hungary during Szijjártó’s tenure.
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