OLAF has no authority to pursue criminal cases or investigate a suspected crime, it noted, adding that it sends its final report on suspected criminal cases to the prosecutor’s office of the member state in question.

An audit carried out by the prosecutor’s office shows that 12 criminal procedures were started on the basis of OLAF’s reports since 2011.

One sentence has been passed, charges have been raised in two cases and investigations are still under way in eight cases. However, an investigation was dropped in one case.

A spokesman of the prosecutor’s office, Géza Fazekas, said that the majority of cases involved budget fraud, attempts to gain economic advantage, embezzlement, fraud and negligence.

The prosecutor’s office said it maintained close and excellent cooperation with OLAF. Opposition Democratic Coalition politician Ágnes Vadai, who sits in parliament as an independent, recently said that the United States and OLAF had reported many instances of suspected corruption in Hungary since 2011.

Vadai insisted that OLAF had also submitted reports concerning more than 30 cases of alleged corruption to the public prosecutor’s office.

She said economy minister Mihály Varga, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and public prosecutor Péter Polt owe an explanation and should come forward with evidence they have about the “hushed-up corruption cases”.

Source www.hungarymatters.hu

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