Hungary's government submits bill to set up anti-corruption office

BUDAPEST, July 10 - Hungary's government submitted a bill to parliament on Friday to create an anti-corruption office, fulfilling a pledge by Prime Minister Peter Magyar for an independent body to probe alleged graft under his predecessor, Viktor Orban.

Magyar, whose landslide election win in April ended Orban's 16-year rule, has billed the National Asset Protection and Recovery Office as a pillar of his anti-corruption drive, which he has dubbed "Operation Purgatory". Orban has denied corruption.

Magyar has said that corruption including the alleged misuse of public funds has cost Hungarians 8% to 10% of gross domestic product in recent years.

"The premise of the regulation is that the vulnerability of public assets is not only a financial but also a democratic risk," the bill published on the parliament's website says.

The mandate of the office is "to uncover past abuses and to prevent future violations", the text says.

KEY STEP ON UNLOCKING EU FUNDS

The new entity will be tasked with identifying, tracing, and recovering assets unlawfully removed from public ownership, as well as investigating public asset management.

It will be headed by a president and four deputies, three of whom must be prosecutors, with appointments subject to parliamentary approval.

Earlier on Friday the president of the European Commission said Hungary would join the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO).

Also on Friday, the Council of the European Union approved Hungary's national recovery plan, marking another step in the process to give Budapest access to about €10 billion ($11.43 billion) of EU funds that had been withheld on concerns about corruption.

"All good things come in threes. EU funds and the prosecutor's office, tick. And just now we submitted the law on the National Asset Protection and Recovery Office," Magyar wrote in a Facebook post. REUTERS