Hungary’s and Malta’s: now the European Union’s two most blatantly corrupt governments

There’s a big article on Bloomberg today about the corrupt mess which has seen $1 billion funnelled from Hungary’s central bank to six foundations set up personally by the bank’s governor, a crony of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Gyorgy Matolcsy was put in charge of the central bank three years ago, and since then has been tapping it for money, lots of money. The Hungarian government’s opponents have taken the matter to the Constitutional Court, which ordered that all documents be published, revealing a shocking paper trail of greed and arrogance, with “scores of transactions that benefited people close to Matolcsy and other allies of Orban instead of the bank or the Treasury”.

“There’s literally a paper trail linking the central bank to questionable payments to individuals related to its chief,” said Otilia Dhand, a political risk analyst at Teneo Intelligence in Brussels. “Even by eastern European standards, this goes beyond your usual allegation of crony capitalism.”

This is a salient and timely reminder that the citizens of EU member states are wholly responsible for choosing their government and, it follows from that, the consequences of those choices. It is therefore crucial not to vote childishly, stupidly, by following the fashion and without sufficient introspection because the consequences of our choices, as we are seeing now, can be grave.