On February 18, it will be eight years since Gábor Simon, the vice-president of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), was interrogated as a suspect for budget fraud at the Central Investigative General Prosecutor's Office (KNYF). It has been six years since the criminal trial against him began, but there has still not been a first-instance verdict in the case.
The first suspicion of the KNYF was then included in the indictment, the essence of which is that Gábor Simon earned 267 million forints in a short period of time, after which he did not pay personal income tax and health contributions, thus causing a financial loss of 128 million forints to the budget. This suspicion and then charges were further expanded after the strange suicide of Tamás Welsz, known as a political adventurer, in March 2014 - he ingested African snake venom in the back seat of a police car - after documents incriminating Gábor Simon, among others, were discovered from his estate. According to this, a forged Bissau-Guinea diplomatic passport issued in the name of Simon's mother - Derdák, Gabriel Derdák - was found, with which Simon's co-accused opened a HUF 40 million account in a Budapest financial institution. For this reason, the leading left-wing politician was also charged with falsification of public documents as an incitement, as well as eight counts of using false private documents. Three of the latter occurred due to the politician's untrue asset declarations, as Simon did not include more than 570,000 euros and 160,000 dollars lying in Swiss and Austrian accounts in his asset declaration, but at the same time declared it as his own in foreign banks.
What is particularly interesting is that for eight years we have not known, just like the authorities, who actually owned this huge amount, well over two hundred million forints at the current exchange rate, even the forensic accounting expert could only determine that it did not belong to the former politician.
The case is currently being heard by the second judge, but the proceedings have practically stopped in recent months. As part of a request for legal aid, the court turned to the Swiss bank managing Simon's account to find out where and from whom the money in the account actually came from. The defense objected to the issuance of the request, saying: they are only wasting time, since they cannot say anything anyway due to bank secrecy. However, the request went through, and after the bank in question gave virtually no response, they urged a response through the Swiss Ministry of Professional Affairs. What did arrive: they confirmed that they could not give any answers due to bank secrecy.
You can read the entire Magyar Nemzet article
Picture: Gábor Simon in court/Máté Bach
