FRIENDLY ADVICE

Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy’s old acquaintances may turn up in the council directing the State Supervision of Financial Organizations (PSZÁF), its members were nominated by the government on Friday.

The president of the council is István Farkas, president of the board of directors of the Hungarian Export Credit Insurance Company and that of Hungarian Export-Import Bank Company. Mr Farkas worked in the ’seventies and ’eighties in the Ministry of Finance, and became deputy of Finance Minister Medgyessy between September 1989 and May 1990. During the Horn government he was for a time government commissioner of bank privatization and president of State Property Management Company. One of the members of the council will be László Asztalos, vice president of Atlasz Insurance Company, he worked before the change of regime for the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Organization, between 1986-89 for the advisory board of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) and he was a managing deputy chairman of the Patriotic People’s Front. He has worked in the Ministry of Finance, too, and for eight years he has been president of state Insurance Supervision. Mr Asztalos was a member of the board of directors of Focus Investment Audit Company between 1988 and January 2001, at this time Péter Medgyessy was a member of the supervising committee of the company. He turned up in Atlasz Insurance Company together with Péter Medgyessy, latter had a function in the board of diractors of this company, too until the change of government. The other member of the council may be László Náray, now vice president of PSZÁF, the third candidate is Gábor Miklós, deputy general director of Hungarian Foreign Trade Bank Company who has been working there since 1971. The operative direction of PSZÁF will be done by Miklós Mátrai, deputy general director of Allianz Hungária Company after the dismissal of Károly Szász.

Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó