Hungary to set up anti-corruption office

Hungary's government submitted a bill to parliament on Friday to create an anti-corruption office, fulfilling a pledge by Prime Minister ​Peter Magyar for an independent body to probe alleged graft ‌under his predecessor, Viktor Orban.

Magyar, whose landslide election win in April ended Orban's 16-year rule, has billed the National Asset Protection and Recovery Office as a pillar ​of his anti-corruption drive, which he has dubbed "Operation Purgatory". Orban ​has denied corruption.

Magyar has said that corruption including the alleged misuse ⁠of public funds has cost Hungarians 8% to 10% of gross ​domestic product in recent years.

"The premise of the regulation is that the ​vulnerability of public assets is not only a financial but also a democratic risk," the bill published on the parliament's website says.

The mandate of the office is "to ​uncover past abuses and to prevent future violations", the text says.

The new entity will be tasked with identifying, tracing, and ‌recovering ⁠assets unlawfully removed from public ownership, as well as investigating public asset management.

It will be headed by a president and four deputies, three of whom must be prosecutors, with appointments subject to parliamentary approval.

Earlier on ​Friday the president ​of the ⁠European Commission said Hungary would join the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO).

Also on Friday, the Council of the European Union approved ​Hungary's national recovery plan, marking another step in the ​process to ⁠give Budapest access to about €10 billion ($11.43 billion) of EU funds that had been withheld on concerns about corruption.

"All good things come in threes. EU ⁠funds ​and the prosecutor's office, tick. And just ​now we submitted the law on the National Asset Protection and Recovery Office," Magyar wrote ​in a Facebook post.


-Reuters