Debt Agency allegedly in the dark about details of settlement-bond issuance

Atlatszo has requested public information from the Government Debt Management Agency (ÁKK) to reveal the details of its much discussed new bond-type that offers buyers the right to settlement in the country, ie. on soil of the European Union. The related Hungarian State Special Debt Fund was established and is currently operating in the Cayman Islands, and is owned by Chinese and Hungarian businessmen. Antal Rogán, head of the parliamentary committee for economics and informatics said he sees no contradiction between his government’s anti-offshore communication strategy and the Cayman entity, and was reluctant to give further information about the ownership structure of the Fund.

ÁKK head István Töröcskei refused to obey the law telling it “contains trade secrets”, adding that he has no information about the exact ownership structure of the Special Debt Fund. In its response, atlatszo.hu highlighted that in such case the Freedom of Information Act gives officials the possibility to redact confidential information from the public documents, and is currently waiting for an answer.

Costing 250,000 euros the settlement-bonds are to be held for a minimum of five years. So far, the Special Debt Fund has been authorized to sell the bonds in China and Vietnam. Two further Special Funds Discus Holdings and Innozone Holdings have been recently established in Malta and Cyprus respectively, the former selling bonds in South Africa, Indonesia, Kenya and Nigeria, the latter one in Cyprus and India.

Translated by atlatszo.hu’s volunteers

Read this article in Hungarian here.