BILLIONS OF RUSSIAN STATE DEBT GONE FOREVER

At today’s rate of exchange 13 billion forints of the Russian state debt have disappeared in the hands of companies attached to the Hungarian Socialist Party.

The National Bureau of Investigation stopped the investigation started two years ago in the case of the vanished 62 million dollars of the Russian state debt, Magyar Nemzet has been informed. The officials claim there is no evidence for violating the law of accountancy or for fraud. The National Bureau of Investigation acted with the consent of the Metropolitan Public Prosecutor’s Office which supervised the investigation. The report in the case had been lodged by the Government Supervision Office which has also expressed its approval about closing the investigation. In 1994 the Horn government set up a committee to handle the Russian state debt, its chairman became László Pál, then Minister of Industry and Commerce. The tender in 1995 was confidential. Later it turned out that several firms connected with the Socialist Party had not met the conditions at all and no money came back to the Hungarian treasury. The scandal affected mainly the companies of László Máté, Treasurer of the Hungarian Socialist Party, and those of Ottó Hujber, head of the entrepreneurial section of the party at that time.

P.Sz.Sz.