November 20th Hearing: ‘No Experts, No Expertise’ Says the Ninth Defendant

The trial of the Budapest Public Transport Company (BKV) continued on Tuesday, November 20^th, 2012 in the city of Kecsemét, Hungary.  The hearing presented the testimony of the previously unheard ninth defendant, Tibor Zelenák, who held various upper level management positions in BKV communications and PR departments.  Zelenák has denied any criminal activity on his part.

 Like all of the already heard defendants, he stated that the evidence against him and many of the other 14 defendants has been “mischievously” created to suit the prosecutions predetermined culprits.  The former BKV public relations director also asserted that the prosecution has neither sought the advice from experts nor displayed any expertise on the charges at hand.

According to the indictment Zelenák created unnecessary contracts which were not in the best interests of the public transportation company, but instead where most profitable for his political supervisor, Miklós Hagyó, his upper management colleagues, or himself.  Furthermore, he is charged with falsification of documents related to certifications of achievements between BKV and contracted companies.  In other words, he allegedly approved or directly signed documents which certified the completion of work (and therefore fulfillment of contractual obligations) but the work was allegedly never completed.  In the eyes of the prosecution, the representatives of the State, this was frivolous spending and adding to the already indebted public company.

The former director of public relations presented himself in the courtroom as a simple, hard-working father of three children whose life has been completed transformed since the eruption of the accusations.  Zelenák spent nearly two months in pretrial detention during 2010, about which he described to the Tribunal.

According to Zelenák, he was put into a cell with a group of “big, violent recidivists” but he was eventually relocated because of a bedbug problem.

The defendant also stated that in his opinion the basis of his pretrial detention, to prevent him from fleeing the country before the trial, was ill-founded.  According to him, the probability of him absconding was “negligible” since he has a family and he had made himself available to investigators for the four months prior to his pretrial detention. 

In reference to BKV’s promotional strategy under the political supervision of Miklós Hagyó and then mayor of Budapest Gábor Demszky, Zelenák stated that BKV’s strategy was no different than the parent company, BKK. 

The Center for Budapest Transportation (BKK) has also been drawn into the hearing discussions, particularly their practice of freely distributing merchandise which was a strategic marketing ploy.  The controversy herein lies in the fact that the BKV representative under trial never practiced such marketing campaigns. 

Zelenák finished his testimony by saying that the interrogators told him in the 2010 investigations that “there is a way for agreement and then he can go back to his family earlier,” but according to him, he did not respond.  He elaborated on the experience by saying that he asked the police if he could call his wife because he did not want her to know about his arrest from the news.  Zelenák then claimed that the police answered with, “stay calm, your arrest was already in the 4pm news.”  According to Zelenák, the only person who did not know about his arrest was him.

The public relations expert said that after his release from pretrial detention he no longer wanted to seek employment in this field.  Instead, he relocated to Switzerland to work as a gardener.


Source: http://thehagyocase.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/november-20th-hearing-no-experts-no-expertise-says-the-ninth-defendant/