{"id":53619,"date":"2026-08-25T18:12:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=53619"},"modified":"2026-08-25T18:12:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:27:26","slug":"hungary-files-a-criminal-complaint-over-965m-covid-19-ventilator-deal-citing-possible-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/hungary-files-a-criminal-complaint-over-965m-covid-19-ventilator-deal-citing-possible-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungary files a criminal complaint over $965M COVID-19 ventilator deal, citing possible fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BUDAPEST, Hungary Aug 25 :<\/strong> Hungary’s foreign ministry has filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors over what it says was possible fraud related to the previous government’s purchase of ventilators worth some $965 million during the COVID-19 pandemic, Foreign Minister Anita Orb\u00e1n said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Hungary’s previous government under former Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n purchased the roughly 17,000 ventilators from China in March and April 2020, drawing criticism at the time that it was buying far more units than could be realistically deployed and paying much more per unit than other European countries.<\/p>\n

In a video posted to Facebook on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Orb\u00e1n, who is not related to the former prime minister, said the results of a ministry investigation into the purchase \u201craises suspicions of breach of fiduciary duty causing particularly substantial financial loss and other criminal offenses.\u201d<\/p>\n

She didn’t detail specific allegations, but noted that the investigation involved tens of thousands of documents \u2014 some of which had to be recovered using digital tools \u201cafter unsuccessful attempts to delete them\u201d \u2014 and raised further questions \u201cabout the responsibility of the ministry\u2019s former senior leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

A statement released on the Hungarian government\u2019s website on Tuesday pointed to other suspected irregularities related to the ventilator procurement, including that most of the units were purchased through intermediary companies that saw their revenues rise exponentially due to the transaction.<\/p>\n

Some of the ventilators were defective, and a significant proportion of them was never deployed, the statement reads, adding that storage costs for the unused devices ran into the millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Hungary’s former foreign minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 cultivated close ties with China during his nearly 12 years in office, and oversaw the purchase of the ventilators as well as the procurement of 5 million doses of the China-produced Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n

Last month, Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 resigned his seat in Parliament to take an executive position with Chinese automaker BYD, prompting accusations of a conflict of interest due to his role in facilitating substantial government subsidies given to the company while in office.<\/p>\n

Hungary’s government later launched an investigation into large investments into Hungary made by BYD during Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3’s tenure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUDAPEST, Hungary Aug 25 : Hungary’s foreign ministry has filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors over what it says was possible fraud related to the previous government’s purchase of ventilators worth some $965 million during the COVID-19 pandemic, Foreign Minister Anita Orb\u00e1n said Tuesday. Hungary’s previous government under former Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n purchased the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53619"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53622,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53619\/revisions\/53622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}