In Tuesday’s hearing of the Budapest Public Transport Company (BKV) trial at the Kecskemét Court, Zsolt Balogh, the former interim CEO of BKV whose incriminating accusations have provided for the bulk of the evidence against Miklós Hagyó and his associates, said his previous statements were not true. Balogh claimed on Tuesday during his long-awaited testimony that he was pressured into accusing Hagyó and others; otherwise, his noncompliance would have resulted in jail time.
“I didn’t want to go to jail like my co-workers. I made the accusatory declarations in the media to avoid being arrested,” explained Balogh. This, of course, refers to his notorious 2010 interviews with the Magyar Nemzet and HírTV when he claimed that he passed millions of forints that were hidden in a Nokia mobile phone box to Hagyó. In those interviews, Balogh said Hagyó had demanded the money during their first meeting after Balogh was elected to be the interim CEO of BKV. At that time, Hagyó was the Deputy Mayor of Budapest, in which capacity he was responsible for the supervision of the public company.
“I’m not a hero. I didn’t want anything else, just to go home,” said the defendant who was originally interrogated by police in 2010 for assisting in a suspected criminal organization, which was allegedly directed by Hagyó. The activities of the organization purportedly consisted of a series of suspicious contracts effected by the upper-management of BKV under the direction of Hagyó. It has been claimed that these contracts were personally or professionally profitable for Hagyó, but not for the publicly funded BKV.
Zsolt Balogh is the third defendant in the trial to say that he was coerced into providing false statements which laid the blame on Hagyó.
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