Hungary Rejects Being Most Corrupt EU Nation
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – The Hungarian government has condemned a report which claims that Hungary replaces Bulgaria as the European Union’s most corrupt member state.
Transparency International (TI) said in its annual report that Hungary dropped four places to 77th in the watchdog’s global Corruption Perceptions Index.
The nation led by rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is five places below fellow EU member Bulgaria and tied with Burkina Faso, among others, in the 180-nation rankings.
However, in a statement, the government noted that “Transparency International is a member of the Soros network,” a reference to the liberal billionaire George Soros. It said the Soros network is “deeply involved in the corruption scandal of the dollar left and the recent corruption scandal in Brussels. This same network funds the campaign of both the Hungarian and the international left and serves it with all its lying reports.”
Yet Brussels shares TI’s concerns, and several sources found evidence that billions in tenders funded by the EU went to companies linked to friends and family members of Orbán.
The EU cited corruption and a perceived lack of the rule of law as reasons for postponing up to $30 billion in aid from Hungary.
The government has only several weeks to introduce relevant legislation to prevent missing out on the first chunk of roughly $13 billion in different support programs. It already pledged an anti-graft authority, but the EU leadership remains skeptical.
Hungary plunged 24 places in the annual corruption index since Orban returned to power in 2010. The watchdog says the country is now in the “state capture” phase, where authorities are generating graft instead of stopping it.
While Hungary claims the report is politically motivated, it was not immediately clear how Soros would have been able to intervene with the TI report. Governments and other decision-makers closely follow its findings.