Hungary tops the list of countries for most OLAF recommendations for the recovery of EU funds between 2014 and 2018. In these four years, OLAF concluded 52 probes into misuse of funds and recommended that the EU Commission to recover 3.84 percent of payments made to Hungary under the bloc’s structural and independent funds and […]
For over twenty years, the European Anti-Fraud Office (commonly known as OLAF, from the French: Office européen de lutte antifraude) has been protecting the EU’s financial interests, investigating fraud, corruption, and serious misconduct within the Union’s budget and institutions. The office has also developed an anti-fraud policy for the European Commission. But while OLAF looks […]
Closed borders and citizens who face tightened supervision over their daily lives. Fast-paced, wide-sweeping and often chaotic actions of governments, which are usually scrutinised by journalists and public opinion but which now, during the COVID-19 epidemic, have become a state secret.
30 years later after the fall of communism, Central Europe’s industries are connected to the West in innumerable ways. But signs that its nuclear industry continues to be heavily influenced by Russian interests are everywhere. Authors: András Szabó (Direkt36), Matej Gašparovič (ICJK), Hana Čápová, Eva Kubániová (investigace.cz), Graphics author: Lenka Matoušková In the Czech Republic, […]
Hungary’s government agreed to limit the number of people who could receive diplomatic immunity in Hungary as staff or guests of the International Investment Bank (IIB). Only one or two dozen of them would receive immunity, Direkt36 has learned. The bank relocated its headquarters from Moscow to Budapest this summer. This story was first published […]
With almost five hundred media outlets owned by a single pro-government foundation and hundreds of millions of euros of state advertising transferred annually to fund it, Hungary’s right-wing government has built Europe’s largest propaganda machine since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Warsaw follows in Budapest’s footsteps with a growing stream of taxpayers’ money funnelled […]
Attila Bátorfy
VSquare
Konrad Szczygieł
This article was originally published by Direkt36 on November 1st, 2019. Viktor Orban’s government has found itself in the middle of a great power conflict in 2019. Last year, a new battleground emerged in the trade war between the United States and China. Washington accused Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei of espionage on behalf of the […]
Huawei is at the center of heated political debate around the world. There is a general assumption among experts on China, ICT (Information and Communications Technology) experts and politicians that the company uses its ICT devices to spy on its users and provide this data to Chinese government. Though there have been separate cases of Huawei breaches […]
