Mihaly Varga, the head of the budgetary fact-finding committee commissioned by Hungary’s new government, said his committee would complete its report by the end of this week and reveal spending items which the previous government had failed to enter in the 2010 budget.
Varga told commercial news channel HirTV on Sunday evening that former government officials would be held to account and legal proceedings started against them.
Varga, who was finance minister in the 1998-2002 government of Viktor Orban, has been tasked to reveal budget discrepancies during the previous Socialist-led governments of Ferenc Gyurcsany and Gordon Bajnai. He said that there are 60 such “hidden” items
Varga said that Bajnai, during an official visit to Washington in late last year, had offered additional troops to serve in Afghanistan, but the costs of the mission had not been taken into account and neither had Defense Ministry officials been consulted on that pledge.
Varga also spoke about contracts that had been concluded at several ministries under “particularly unfavourable” terms for leasing cars, as well as those concerning financing of church-run schools.