Bus is charged with accepting bribes in his official capacity while abusing his position for personal gain, acting in a criminal conspiracy, and engaging in such conduct on a commercial scale, KNYF said.

Bus, a Fidesz politician, was deputy mayor in his district between 2002 and 2006, and mayor between October 2006 and October 2019.

According to the charges, Bus and other municipal politicians operated a corruption system within the local government from 2008, using their position and official status to obtain regular income, regardless of whether they spent the given election cycle leading the local government or in opposition.

In a post written from the Csillag Prison in Szeged, Bus said on Facebook that he considered himself "a political prisoner of the Tisza regime", adding that the National Tax and Customs Office had taken him from his home "on charges based on mere assumptions". 

He insisted that he had refuted these charges in court, and the court had issued an unlawful ruling to keep him in detention, "in accordance with the expectations of Prime Minister Peter Magyar".

Bus said his only "crime" had been to be a member of Fidesz, further insisting that he had committed no legal violations, illegal acts, or omissions, and that the prime minister "was lying when he claimed" that 17 billion forints (EUR 47m) disappeared from the national cultural fund NKA.

Bus insisted that the NKA had been handed over to the new minister with a surplus of more than 10 billion forints.

Meanwhile, Boka calls asset recovery authority 'new political police'

The ruling Tisza Party seeks to create "a coercive machinery over the whole of Hungarian society", the group leader of opposition Fidesz said on Tuesday, after parliament passed legislation to create a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office.

Janos Boka said deputies of Fidesz and the Christian Democrats had not supported the bill aimed at creating "a new political police completing Tisza's arbitrary rule".

Boka said that Tisza had already "liquidated" its political opponents and the heads of institutions of the rule of law, and suggested that the new organisation would have the powers to "spy on, launch procedures against and destroy anybody." 

"The assets of private individuals or companies could be in the cross hairs for political revenge and intimidation," Boka said.

The new "party police" will have powers to launch investigations, press charges, or take ongoing procedures from the prosecution, as well as "wiretap people and use coercive measures, employ undercover agents, build a network of spies ... seize assets and take over companies without any legal remedy, control or restraint ... on instruction from the ruling party," Boka said.

He also noted that leaders of the new authority would be granted immunity, thus "they could stigmatise anybody without taking responsibility for the truthfulness of their remarks."

"All this is nothing else but total, uncontrolled arbitrary rule," Boka said.

MTI Stock Photo

Source: MTI – Hungary’s national news agency since 1881.

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