Matolcsy lied to atlatszo.hu, says Metropolitan Court of Budapest

The owner of the secret document titled Declaration of Intent about Malév, the now bankrupt national airline – that was drawn up between Chinese investors and the Hungarian state – is not the Ministry of National Development (NFM) nor the Ministry for National Economy, rather it is György Matolcsy (former Minister of National Economy, now the head of the Hungarian Central Bank) in his capacity as Government Commissioner, said the Metropolitan Court of Budapest in a ruling. It’s a pity that earlier, in his role as Government Commissioner, Matolcsy wrote us in a letter that the controller or custodian of the document was not him but the NFM.

“Last spring we filed a FOIA request to the Ministry of National Development (NFM) in order to get to know the Declaration of Intent about Malév that was drawn up between Chinese investors and the Hungarian state. The NFM was not willing to give us the document, so we filed a lawsuit. […] During the earlier court hearings it turned out that after denying our FOIA request, NFM handed over the document over to the Ministry of National Economy (NGM) lead by György Matolcsy, therefore we also sued the NGM. However, according to the respondents, the document is at the Secretariat of the Government Commissioner, which was first led by development minister Tamás Fellegi, and then by economy minister Matolcsy.

At the last hearing the court obligated Atlatszo.hu to identify the owner of the document. We tried our best to assure the court that we are indeed looking for the secret Malév documents at the right place. Nevertheless, the legal representative of NFM and NGM managed to convince the Metropolitan Court of Budapest that we are talking about separate organizational units in spite of the fact that the Secretariat of the Government Commissioner is operated as part of the ministry and in the stated period was lead by the same person.

In spite of the ruling, by all means we would like to save the honor of György Matolcsy, therefore we will appeal to the Metropolitan Regional Court.

Read the original article in Hungarian here.

Translation by Orsolya Gulyás