Unidentified Hungarian government officials may have received as much as €333,000 in kickbacks from German car maker Daimler in the procurement of Volánbusz vehicles, according to the lawsuit filed by the US Attorney General’s Office in the US on Monday.
The lawsuit accuses Daimler of paying bribes in at least 22 countries in order to procure contracts between 1998 and 2008. Daimler agreed yesterday to plead guilty, and pay a $185 million fine.
The 76-page document does not explicitly claim that Hungarian officials accepted cash, but it does state that the above sum had been deposited by Austrian company EvoBus for them at an US-registered company and was “wholly or partly” at their disposal.
EvoBus Hungária agreed on May 23, 2005 or thereabouts to sell 32 buses to the state-owned Volánbusz. EvoBus Hungária purchased 17 buses from EvoBus Austria for €1,678,170 and sold them to Volánbusz for €1,745,000. EvoBus approved the payment of €333,370 in “commission” to a company called USCON with the proviso that the whole sum or part of it should be relayed to Hungarian government officials, the lawsuit said.
In October 2006, when the US Securities & Exchange Commission and judicial bodies investigated Daimler’s transactions, the then CEO of EvoBus created a fictitious advisory contract backdated to April 2005, to show that EvoBus Austria had delivered the buses to EvoBus Hungária.
The state asset manager MNV has launched its own inquiry.
Government bodies last purchased a Mercedes bus in 1997 and Mercedes has not taken part in any public procurement since then, government spokesman Domokos Szollár told reporters.