Former tax administration (NAV) employee András Horváth went public claiming that reluctance of the NAV to uncover VAT fraud arbitrarily favours some businesses and results in hundreds of billions of forints losses of revenue each year. This might be the biggest corruption scandal of Hungary unfolded by a whistleblower, if the allegations by Mr Horvath prove to be true. This is why TI was astonished to learn that a single weekend sufficed for the NAV to examine the serious charges and to come to the conclusion that accusations made by Mr Horváth were unfounded, since the NAV had fully complied with all legal regulations, and none of its employees had neglected their duties.

We are outraged by the fact that the government, which claims to be strongly committed to protecting whistle-blowers, up to the point that it even adopted a law to this end, is exposing the tax inspector to retaliation. The only reason why Mr Horváth was not fired is that he had already resigned. Meanwhile the newly voted law to protect whistle-blowers says that those who reveal wrongdoing, corruption or misuse of public funds shall not be exposed to discrimination of whatsoever kind.

Transparency International does not know whether Mr Horváth’s allegations are true and, not less importantly, whether there is substantial evidence to uphold them. What we know however is that the hasty investigation and the expeditious announcements of the NAV will not get us closer to revealing the truth.

Thus, we expect the prosecution to appropriately handle the case and proceed about it better than the NAV did. We demand a thorough investigation of what the National Tax and Customs Administration did and what it failed to do when collecting the taxes which are vital for the state budget.