Hungary Investigates Pandemic Ventilator Purchases

Hungary’s Foreign Ministry has filed a complaint with prosecutors over suspected fraud and other criminal offenses related to the purchase of ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 under the previous government, Foreign Minister Anita Orban said on Tuesday.

At the time, the ministry purchased nearly 17,000 ventilators for approximately 300bn forints ($964m). According to Orban, thousands of surplus devices were bought that could not realistically be used, while prices were also inflated. She said most of the ventilators remain in storage to this day.

The number of devices purchased significantly exceeded the number that could be used given the available intensive care doctors, nurses and hospital beds.

According to the minister, an internal audit provided only a partial picture of the pandemic-era purchases because some of the documentation had to be reconstructed electronically. The complaint filed with prosecutors is based on 88 gigabytes of data, comprising approximately 130,000 reconstructed files.

Orban said import data and tax authority records showed that the ministry had purchased ventilators from Hungarian suppliers at prices significantly above their production costs.

(Reuters, bak)