Police allege "set-up" as former CEO cleared of all charges

The Budapest Municipal Court yesterday acquitted former Postabank CEO Gábor Princz on charges of fraud and mismanagement of Ft 34.6 billion at the state-owned institution. The court also found the other six defendants not guilty.

Judge Erzsébet Diós found no violation of law and no decline in the bank's asset value. Prosecutor István Bodonyi will appeal against the ruling. That court case will start in six to twelve months, Népszabadság adds.

Police experts speaking on condition of anonymity said the acquittal was set up in the indictment, Magyar Hírlap reports. The six-year police investigation concentrated on violations of accounting rules, but the Budapest prosecutors made them change the accusation to mismanagement of funds. Police made the adjustment in April 2003, but it was not well-prepared thus the acquittal was expected, they said.

The government injected Ft 150 billion to rescue Postabank after a run on the institution on February 27, 1997. Princz was the head of Postabank from the early 1990s until 1998. It was eventually sold to Erste Bank in 2003.

In the 1990s the chairman of bankrupt Ybl Bank, Imre Nagy got two years in prison, and Agrobank CEO Péter Kunos was sentenced to four years on bribery charges.

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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