Hungarian investigative journalist beaten in Budapest

Investigative journalist Irén Kármán, who has been looking into the oil adulteration cases of the mid-1990s, was beaten, tied up and left by the Danube with critical injuries late Friday night. She was rushed to János Hospital, where a life-saving operation was performed to stop internal bleeding.

Kármán told MTV Sunday from her hospital room that she was kidnapped and forced into a car in the 20th District. The assailants said nothing about who instructed them.

Kármán has authored a book on illegal oil dealings and police corruption, called Facing the Mafia. Both that book and a 2006 documentary written by her suggest that police, customs officials and politicians were involved in oil adulteration. The scheme involved altering subsidised heating oil for sale as diesel fuel.

Nobody has ever been charged in the scam, and the records of a parliamentary investigation in 2000 were classified as secret for 85 years.

She said she has a two-thirds completed script for a film, but the question is whether funds will be provided and whether any producer would dare invest in such a project.

Népszabadság quotes former police colonel Ferenc Labanc as saying that three weeks ago he and Kármán began to write a script about a group formed 13 years ago which was broken up because it got too far in investigating connections between politicians, police and the underworld. He suggested that Kármán’s beating was meant as a message to close the mouths of those who speak to her.

She told Népszabadság that she had sent an open letter to Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány recently asking him to lift the secrecy surrounding the oil adulteration cases and make public the names of politicians who were in some way connected to the oil mafia, regardless of party affiliation.

She said she had received several death threats. Free Democrat politicians went to visit her on Sunday. Kármán recently made several statements on television and her internet blog which could have angered many, Magyar Hírlap surmises.

Government spokesman Dávid Daróczi said the government considers the protection of press freedom as particularly important. Gyurcsány has instructed National Police chief József Bencze to personally monitor the investigation, he added.

Bencze decided to instruct the National Bureau of Investigation to take over from Budapest Police. Police interviewed her on Sunday. Justice and Law Enforcement Minister Albert Takács said neither politicians nor the public must exert pressure on the investigating bodies.

Former police officer István Sándor, who once led the investigation into oil adulteration, said the mafia has sent a message to "Tamás P.," who at one point provided sanctuary to oil adulterators, by linking them with the Mór massacre of five years ago.

The above story is just one of more than two dozen published today by Hungary Around the Clock, the most comprehensive source of daily English-language news about Hungary. For a free trial of HATC, click here. Hungarian news sources include Népszabadság; Magyar Hírlap; Világgazdaság; Napi Gazdaság; Magyar Nemzet; Népszava; Kossuth Rádió news and Hungarian television's nightly news broadcast.

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