The work of the Civil Justice Committee, founded by CÖF-CÖKA, basically involves the presentation of crimes committed during communism that have not yet been investigated and thus remained without consequences. Jr. Zoltán Lomnici is researching the methods and consequences of non-transparent asset management before 2010 based on the investigation of the State Audit Office.
Before 2008, state assets were managed by three independent institutions operating according to different operating rules. Based on the grouping of assets according to their type, the Állami Privatizáció és Vagyonkezelő Zrt. (ÁPV Zrt.), the Treasury Property Administration (KVI) and the National Land Fund Management Organization (NFA) managed the assets.
The Parliament wanted to place the management of state assets on new foundations, such as the exercise of ownership rights related to state assets, as well as the Vtv., which abolished the previous institutional system on December 31, 2007. It was replaced by the National Wealth Management Council, whose working organization is the Magyar Nemzeti Vagyonkezelą Zrt. (MNV Zrt.) and the Audit Committee. MNV Zrt. is a one-person private joint-stock company, in which the rights of the sole shareholder, the Hungarian state, are exercised by the Minister of Finance.
In relation to the property law, which is one of the legal bases of the operations, the ÁSZ stated that in the management of the assets entrusted to it by MNV Zrt., by mapping the tasks taken over from the predecessor organizations, three priority groups of assets (real estate, National Land Fund, company shares) are separated, which is also followed by the regulation and practice of the Company's operations .
State assets are managed by MNV Zrt. either by itself or by ceding them to others with a utilization contract. In connection with the utilization of state real estate, Vtv. its aim is to fit it into the unified organizational and operational system of managing the state assets as a whole, and as a result, the transparency and efficiency of utilization will also improve in relation to the utilization of real estate assets. This goal was only partially achieved during the audited period due to regulatory (contradiction between the relevant legislation) and organizational (competence, number of staff) deficiencies. The company, which exercises ownership rights over state assets on behalf of the state, operates in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Economic Companies, like all companies, but must also comply with certain rules applicable to budgetary institutions.
The transformation was not smooth. The State Audit Office, fulfilling its legal obligations, carried out a comprehensive audit at MNV Zrt., examining its operations in 2008. Part of the investigation was the control of the establishment and, among other things, the assessment of whether the institution-system created for the management and utilization of state assets - in the management of the assets entrusted to it - ensured the state real estate assets, the land assets belonging to the National Land Fund and the state-owned companies over the assets of joint-stock companies, the efficient operation of the state assets, the protection of its composition, the preservation of its value, utilization and increase. The findings of the very voluminous report published in August 2009 are devastating. With regard to the transformation of the institutional system, he points out that in the previous year's report, he drew the attention of decision-makers to the inaccuracies and contradictions of the Property Act and related legislation, the tasks not completed within the deadline, and the consequences of all this. He recommended eliminating the deficiencies and establishing responsibility for the omissions.
However, the proposals were not followed by substantive, effective responses. According to the report, the consequence of this was that the legal regulation of the transformation remained insufficient. The draft law was not properly prepared - the Government did not discuss a conceptual proposal, no timetable, no action plan was drawn up, nor was there an impact study, the economic effects were not quantified - and there was also a lack of proper parliamentary control as a result of the forced acceleration of the law-making process.
The legal regulation therefore became contradictory and incomplete at several points, the consequence of which was that the tasks related to the transformation were not completed at all, or not completed within the deadline, and the lack of accountability.
The closing balance sheets of the defunct institutions, which would have formed the basis of the opening balance sheet of the newly established MNV Zrt., were not prepared, but MNV Zrt. was registered without an opening balance sheet. In such circumstances, we cannot speak of an actual handover, the new institution was created and started operating in such a way that it was essentially impossible to determine how much, what composition and value of state assets were available for the management of the three previous institutions at the time of their termination, and how much and what MNV Zrt. started its operation with state assets of the composition and value.
(to be continued)
Author: Jr. Zoltán Lomnici is a constitutional lawyer
(On the cover photo: Gyurcsány accompanied Zsolt Császy, who was convicted of the Sukoro plot exchange case, only to the prison gate. Photo: MTI/Szilárd Koszticsák)
