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Atlatszo online kickback tracker goes live

Hungary’s first bribe-tracking website Fizettem.hu received around two hundred accounts of kickbacks being solicited or paid in its first week, after atlatszo.hu launched the public beta on 11 November. The anonymous submissions detail bribery scenarios and amounts involved, with cases reported so far including payments to health workers, police officers and local councillors.

Currently the most read post recalls a surgeon asking a patient for EUR 830 for the removal of a mole, saying the money would help cover his son’s tuition fees in England. The patient refused to hand over any cash, the account underlines. Stories such as these will help atlatszo.hu to access Hungary’s ‘corruption market price’, and the website will publish statistics for different sectors when it has received at least 600 reports.

Atlatszo launched Fizettem (which translates as “I have paid”) after a fundraising campaign raised around EUR 2,100 for the localisation of the system from private individuals. “We decided to start the website because we believe transparency is the enemy of corruption,” project leader Edit Vitrai said.

Edited by Dan Nolan. Find out more about Fizettem.hu in Hungarian here

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