State owned company claims FOIA exemption

Atlatszo.hu filed a lawsuit against the company (Erzsébet Utalványforgalmazó és Gazdasági Szolgáltató Kft.) responsible for the distribution of Erzsébet-vouchers in order to make the financial information of the company public. At the first trial hearing the data custodian called into question if the FOI request atlatszo.hu sent them on 30 January 2013 was received. The company also claimed an exclusion from the duty, despite the fact that they are a wholly government owned corporation running a state program. Moreover, the company called on atlatszo.hu to remove them from the list of data custodians on the public FOI request site KiMitTud, and threatened us with demanding a revision of KiMitTud’s activities from the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. Atlatszo.hu didn’t take up the request of the company, but at the same time submitted to the court a server log for the emails containing the FOI requests.

See the action atlatszo.hu has started here in Hungarian.

Read this article in Hungarian here.