Brokergate: A Motion to Dismiss

Do you remember where you were at exactly 7:00 p.m. Budapest time nine years ago yesterday? I do. At 1:00 p.m., October 3, 1995 I was standing in front of a TV in New York City with my mouth wide open, watching in stunned silence as O.J. Simpson was acquitted of America's most recent "Crime of the Century," the savage knife murder of his estranged wife and her young friend. I likewise will remember for at least nine months where I was last Thursday at noon. I was sitting in front of my laptop at the wi-fi enabled Menza on Liszt tér, sipping my coffee in stunned silence as Attila Kulcsár, a central figure in Hungary's most recent "Crime of the Century," was sprung from jail and allowed to return home pending trial.

If you haven't been following the "brokergate" scandal in close detail, I don't blame you. A slightly baffling case when it first broke several years ago, it has in recent months devolved into an utterly incomprehensible tangle of charges, counter-charges, counter-counter-charges, and double-counter-counter-charges. It is now so impossibly convoluted that one can only assume the whole thing is just a big hall of mirrors designed to distract attention from the fact that no one is likely to do series time for the various crimes that together form brokergate.

A cancer on the republic: If even partly true, the allegations of key "brokergate" figure Attila Kulcsár mean radical measures may be required to save Hungary's justice system.

Which is why I am actually happy that Kulcsár has been remanded to house arrest, and why I would even support letting him leave Hungary. In fact, after the last few weeks of revelations, it is pretty clear that the entire brokergate case should leave Hungary, and be tried in a court as far away from Budapest as possible.

Unfortunately, the problem is not just one of complexity, but of a justice system that is either corrupt beyond redemption, or fatally compromised by a reputation of being corrupt beyond redemption.

While brokergate was initially focused on charges of embezzlement at the brokerage unit of Kereskedelmi és Hitelbank Rt (K&H) - hence the "broker" in "brokergate" - it is now mostly about the various charges of obstruction of justice and high-level influence-peddling associated with the underlying crime.

After simmering for some months, the scandal was blown open again last week after a bombshell story in right-wing daily Magyar Nemzet. The piece detailed some very unhygienic contact Kulscár is alleged to have had with the people who were supposed to be bringing the brokergate suspects to justice. The allegations are only that - allegations. But even if only 10% of them are true, or they are all 10% true, then we must assume the worst; that what first appeared as a small but unsightly blemish on Hungary's systems of law and justice has fully metastasized into full-blown cancer, and radical measures are required to save the patient.

Bácskai: Say it ain't so, János

The list of alleged conspirators reads like a who's who of national law-enforcement officials, and includes János Bácskai, who was suspended as director of the national police's anti-organized crime center; László Ferenczi, director of another national anti-crime task force; Csaba Molnár, leader of the anti-money laundering branch of the anti-organized crime center; and Csaba Papp, the former head of the anti-economic crimes branch of the anti-organized crime force.

According to Magyar Nemzet, Kulcsár needed these and other connections to have the State Financial Institutions Supervision (PszÁF), the apparently steadfast state body responsible for investigating the wrongdoing at K&H, put on ice. The paper says Kulcsár is claiming he had András Jegesy, the husband of Interior Minister Mónika Lamperth, make the connections with the cops. He also allegedly met with senior official in the prime minister's office, who agreed to contact Bácskai, with the aim of having the police beat the PszÁF to the case, and then to lay off. The paper says one of the men, László Kodela, at the time a deputy-state secretary in the PM's office, requested Ft 5 million for the job. While Kulcsár apparently says he doesn't know who received the money, he eventually was able to meet Bácskai and give him a list of incriminating documents to be kept out of the hands of the PszÁF. In the end, the police raided K&H and hauled away a cache of papers just a few hours before agents from the PszÁF.

Meanwhile, Kulcsár is apparently claiming that he acted as a bagman in a dirty deal involving another official in the PM's office, Ferenc Baja, and a lucrative government contract with IT firm Synergon.

Naturally, most of those implicated in the various affairs spiraling outwards from the original K&H case loudly protest their innocence. For his part, Baja issued a statement ridiculing Magyar Nemzet for treating Kulcsár as a believable source, and thus rehabilitating the self-confessed crook. "I don't understand how Magyar Nemzet believes a man who faces criminal charges and a long imprisonment," said Baja, not bothering to explain why we should believe him, since he also may be facing criminal charges and a long imprisonment.
So who is guilty, and who is innocent? Well, it beats me! Which, again, seems to be the whole point.

Rejtő (and escort): Forget and forgive

What I do know is that, if things proceed the way they are going, we will probably never find out what actually happened to the estimated Ft 23 billion (roughly €93 million) bilked from K&H's clients, and how wide and high the subsequent cover-up reached - or continues to reach. Instead, the various cases, as well as Kulcsár and his partners in crime, will simply fade away, just like the famous Postabank scandal of the late-1990s. The disgraced former head of K&H, Hungarian-Canadian Tibor E. Rejtő, is walking the streets of Budapest, after being first let out on bail, and then released from house arrest. One wonders how long it will be before he is back running a bank again.

I don't know where a case like this could be fairly and effectively prosecuted. But if individuals are free to drag their complaints about discrimination to an EU court in Strasbourg, 10 million baffled and increasingly cynical Hungarians should be able to have brokergate remanded to a criminal court in a place where the country's audacious class of political fixers and bendable officials can't muck it up.

Strasbourg, Brussels, Stockholm - even Naples would probably be an improvement over the current state of things. Hell, I'd almost say the case should be moved to a court somewhere in America, were it not for what happened that strange October morning all those years ago.