Here are the facts: after a search of his house, the former chief director of the National Security Office (NBH) Lajos Galambos was put under house arrest on June 30. On the same day, again after his home was searched, György Szilvásy, former Socialist minister without portfolio in charge of the secret services, was also taken into custody. One day later, Sándor Laborc, Galambos’s predecessor at the head of NBH, joined Szilvásy in the lockup. Szilvásy and Galambos are accused of espionage, but both were released from custody shortly after being detained. The charge against Laborc is aiding and abetting.
Not many facts indeed, but these are the only certainties made public about the caseso far, and as things look now, no further details will come to light for a long while: the government has sealed all relevant documents until 2089.
While the Socialists spoke up for Szilvásy right after his arrest and called the entire process merely part of “a political show down started by the Fidesz government,” the ruling party has not commented.
Still, some circumstances suggest that the incident might have had a political motive.On Thursday, one day before Szilvásy’s arrest, Hungary handed over the rotating presidency of the EU to Poland and so shed the international spotlight. Fidesz’s party congress for the re-election of party officials took place on Saturday, one day after the incident. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s already shining political star was given extra glitter through his taking a crony of the “main enemy”, former Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, into custody, and this might have had a little part in Orbán’s 99.7% victory at the party president election at the congress.
Gyula Budai, the accountability government commissioner in charge of exposing earlier political corruption, who is also coordinating Szilvásy’s case, has rather little to show for his time spent in office so far. Despite the huge scandals kicked up around them, the documents of the BKV corruption case as well as the controversial property purchases in Sukoró have all been put back in their drawers since they were first aired.
Most recently, the MSzP asked the National Protective Service, the ConstitutionProtection Office and the Military Prosecutor to decipher the documentsof “the accusations in the mostserious counter-state crime of the Third Hungarian Republic.” MSzP’s request had remained unanswered by the BudapestBusiness Journal’s deadline.
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