The president of the Integrity Authority omitted a two-hectare estate from his asset declaration

On Thursday, Ferenc Biró was charged with misappropriation of a substantial amount of money and abuse of office by the prosecutor’s office. At a press conference on Friday, the president of the Integrity Authority said, among other things, that the fence at his home was reinforced with money from the office. The house, which was built a few years ago, is located on a two-hectare property in the countryside, according to a property deed obtained by Átlátszó, and although it is partly owned by the president, it is not listed in his property declaration. This is because in 2022, a change in the law allowed that the residence does not have to be indicated in the property declarations. This amendment was made to protect the secrecy of politicians.

On 16 January the Central Investigating Prosecutor’s Office had questioned the chairman of the Integrity Authority (IH), Ferenc Biró, as a suspect in a case of misappropriation of funds and abuse of office. Among other things, Mr Biró is suspected of renting two cars on the IH’s account and using one of them for private purposes with his wife. The President has complained against the allegations, which he considers unfounded and that “through attacking him they want to make the Integrity Authority impossible to operate”.

On Thursday, the police, accompanied by a press release, entered the IH building, where they searched for several hours and took thousands of pages of documents and contracts. At a press conference the next day, Biró suggested that the operation might be linked to the IH’s investigation the previous week into contracts held by the National Communications Office, under the supervision of Antal Rogán, cabinet minister.

Government mouthpiece Magyar Nemzet daily, which was the first to learn about the possible charges against Ferenc Biró, also said that the head of the Integrity Authority “had a fence of several hundred metres built around his property in the Budapest agglomeration on a vast area of land”, and that the “luxury villa on the plot” had been “renovated and improved, also with money from the Integrity Authority”.

The IH president denied at a press conference on Friday that he had acted improperly on any of the charges.

He said that when he took up the position he received many threats and, with the support of the head of the Constitutional Protection Authority, he appealed to the Parliament’s National Security Committee to reinforce the fence around his residence. Although the head of the Integrity Authority is not a protected person, it is possible that this indeed did take place. How much the authority spent on personal and property protection in relation to Biró’s person we requested from the Integrity Authority in a public data request. We will report it as soon as we receive the detailed list.

He acted legally when he omitted the estate from his asset declaration

Ferenc Biró did not say exactly which house’s fence was reinforced. In his publicly available asset declaration last year, he listed a total of 5 properties: a plough in Veszprém, a private garden in Veszprém, a property in Serenc and Tállya, and a 1,638 m2 private garden in Solymár. The latter was bought by Biró in 2023.

However, according to data from the property registry obtained by Átlátszó, the IH president also owns a much larger property in Solymár than the one listed in the property declaration.

According to the title deeds, this is a 21,000 square metre, detached house, courtyard, farm building, forest and pasture, partly classified as a Natura 2000 nature protection site, which he bought jointly with his wife and another family member in 2014. And then, according to publicly available satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth, they started building in earnest and put up a nice house on the property.

When we asked about this, the Integrity Authority said that the Authority’s President and his family do indeed live there, which is why the property was not included in Bíro’s property declaration. Legally, as required by the law, which also applies to the Authority’s president,

“property which is used by the declarant or a member of his family as his normal place of residence or as a permanent home shall not be included.”

Any additional property must already be declared, and presumably has been.

The clause allowing the omission of residence, among many other relaxations, was inserted into the legislation in 2022, most likely with the aim of preventing MPs from being asked awkward questions about their properties.

Earlier, for example, minister Antal Rogán had to amend his January 2014 asset declaration twice after it emerged that his property in the Pasa Park housing estate was larger than he had previously disclosed. But minister Mihály Varga’s asset declaration also revealed that he was renting a 200-square-metre house with a swimming pool at a low price.

Although MPs have never had to declare their address in their asset declarations, the 2022 amendment allowing the omission of residence could also be intended to protect privacy – but then presumably it would also apply to local councillors and mayors. It does not. However, the chairman of the Integrity Authority could, and apparently did, make use of the exception.

However, the Integrity Authority’s Code of Ethics states that

“You must not only be above reproach, you must also appear to be above reproach. Those who fight corruption must not be suspected. The activities of the Integrity Authority, like those of its staff, must uphold the highest standards of integrity and impartiality. Total integrity is the least we can do to serve our country.”

We are not convinced that in the case of the head of the anti-corruption organisation, the omission of the most valuable property from the declaration of assets, hiding behind a change in the law to benefit secretive politicians, served the purpose of preserving the appearance of integrity. In any case, the government media attacking the Integrity Authority and its president have already published drone photos of the ‘hidden’ property not included in the declaration of assets.

Written by Eszter Katus and Tamás Bodoky. The Hungarian version of this story is here. Photo credit: Google Earth/Ferenc Biró. Eszter Katus is a member of the Anti-Corruption Working Group of the Integrity Authority as a delegate of Átlátszó. Tamás Bodoky was a member of the Working Group in 2023-2024.