In accordance with Csaba Czeglédy's instructions, the defendants retract their confessions one after the other, Fidesz member of parliament Gyula Budai announced on Thursday in front of the Kecskemét Court before the trial of the criminal organization connected to Human Operator Zrt. In his testimony, Csaba Czeglédy did not admit his guilt.

According to Gyula Budai, "it is absolutely clear that the noose is tightening around the lawyer of the mafia left, Csaba Czeglédy".

The Fidesz politician, referring to the testimony of the sixth accused in the case on Wednesday, said: "the man is the crown witness of the case, because he was the one who fully revealed the operation of the school cooperatives, and before the Makó District Court he gave an incriminating testimony to Csaba Czeglédy and his accomplices, to the operation of the entire criminal organization, therefore, there was no other way left for him but to accuse the prosecutor's office of forced interrogation".

In February 2020, the Szeged Jury found the sixth defendant, a former manager of Kopernikusz Iskolaszötvekezet, who worked indirectly as a subcontractor of Human Operator Zrt., guilty of budget fraud and violation of the accounting rules as an accessory to the crime. However, the Szeged Court of First Instance overruled the verdict of the first instance, as another indictment was brought against the man also for budget fraud, and the two cases form such a legal entity that the court ordered a new trial and the merging of the cases.

During his testimony at the Kecskemét Court on Wednesday, the sixth-ranked defendant said that he no longer maintains his previous confessions, which preceded the final verdict, because he made them under duress - in order to be released as soon as possible, fearing for his life and under pressure from the prosecutor's office.

Gyula Budai recalled: the sixth-ranked accused then changed his confession after he was severely abused in the "Star Prison" in Szeged.

He called it clear that Csaba Czeglédy is trying to set up the entire criminal procedure as a "conceptual procedure, and himself as a martyr".

He also said that, in his opinion, Csaba Czeglédy's goal is clearly to prolong the criminal proceedings, not to issue a final judgment, so that he can run in the elections in Szombathely as a candidate for the DK.

The Csongrád County Prosecutor's Office brought charges against Csaba Czeglédy and twenty of his associates for budget fraud and other crimes in February 2019 at the Szeged District Court in the case of the criminal organization related to the Szombathely-based Human Operator Zrt.

According to the indictment, the purpose of the criminal organization, which has been operating since 2011, was to reduce the VAT liability of the company, which mainly deals with student labor mediation, and to exempt it from paying other public charges related to student work, such as personal income tax.

By placing two general subcontractors in the middle, Human Operator Zrt. - which involved eight school cooperatives as fulfillment assistants - brokered a significant number of workers to companies operating in Hungary. The cooperatives that nominally employ the workers did not, or only partially, declare and failed to pay the taxes and public charges to be paid for the employees.

According to the indictment, the criminal organization caused HUF 6.215 billion in losses to the state budget.

Czeglédy denies it

Csaba Czeglédy did not admit his guilt in the beginning of his testimony at the Kecskemét Court on Thursday in the case of Human Operator Zrt., which he manages.

Upon arriving at the court, Csaba Czeglédy said: " we will prove that this is a conceptual procedure and that the prosecution extracted confessions ".

And when asked where the more than six billion forints went, he answered: "It didn't go away, that's the point."

At the hearing before the council headed by Edina Surányiné Pólik, the politician declared that he was not guilty. He added that as the chairman of the board of the Szombathely-based Human Operator, neither he nor his colleagues committed a crime, and the budget was not deliberately damaged.

He explained that in the proceedings that have been ongoing since 2015, " for the first time, he has the opportunity to defend himself and to clarify his role and that of his colleagues ."

Founded in January 2001, Human Operator Kft. operated until December 2010, after which it changed corporate form. In Csaba Czeglédy's opinion, the prosecution " is trying to infer the intent of the crime from this, but this is wrong, " he added.

source: MTI / hirado.hu

Cover image: Illustration - Photo: Magyar Nemzet/ Zoltán Havran