Hungary’s ventilator scandal: Foreign ministry paid inflated prices

Hungary’s Foreign Ministry paid above-market prices for ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to current State Secretary György László Velkey. The purchases took place under former Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, a close associate of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Velkey said the ministry bought the equipment through numerous Hungarian and foreign intermediary companies instead of purchasing directly from manufacturers. Most of those firms had no previous experience in the medical-equipment sector. Some entered the market just before signing their contracts, while others were established in 2020, the same year they began selling ventilators.

One company had links to people close to the previous government, Velkey said. He also alleged that Szijjártó’s ministry bought ventilators and protective equipment at prices far higher than the prices the intermediaries had paid abroad. The transactions, he added, allowed many of those companies to multiply their turnover.

“While people were fighting for their lives, others tried to profit from public funds,” Velkey wrote on Facebook.

At the end of August, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry notified prosecutors of suspected fraud and other crimes connected with medical-equipment purchases made in 2020. The complaint concerns orders placed in March and April that were treated as exceptions to public-procurement procedures. The contracts covered nearly 17,000 ventilators and had a total value of about 300 billion forints, or just under 827 million euros. The ministry handed prosecutors 88 gigabytes of material, including 130,000 recovered files.

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While people were fighting for their lives, others tried to profit from public funds.