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16th October, 2026
Gas mafia may have siphoned off close to Ft 300bn
A "gas mafia" may have smuggled Ft 300 billion worth of natural gas out of Hungary through complex international transactions, according to a detailed 444 article.
The officially confirmed VAT loss is Ft 67 billion.
The scheme used natural gas imported from other EU countries to generate VAT on a high-volume, high-value product.
Shell companies then offset it with fake invoices for electronics such as IT equipment.
The money passed through bank accounts in Slovakia and then the United Kingdom.
The network of more than 100 companies was backed by several hundred million euros in starting capital.
Some of the firms were complicit in the scam, while others were innocent traders seeking normal margins.
The investigation has been running for two years, with more than 40 suspects and two people in pre-trial detention for over 18 months.
One of them is “L.”, a gas industry professional who handled the companies’ licensing with the energy regulator.
In its first statement, the tax authority NAV put the VAT loss at only Ft 10 billion.
The case raises questions about how the regulator licensed these firms, why banks opened accounts without flagging the huge transactions, and how the tax authority accepted their returns for so long, 444 writes.
It also raises the question of how legitimate traders unwittingly helped them into the market.
Energy expert Zoltán Jolsvai told Telex the key question is who benefited. He said it was essentially an ordinary VAT fraud, unique only in its scale and the capital behind it.
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Sources regularly consulted, with abbreviations used in text: Népszabadság (N); Magyar Hírlap (MH); Világgazdaság (VG); Napi Gazdaság (NG); Magyar Nemzet (MN); Népszava (Nsz); Kossuth Rádió news (KR); nightly TV news (TV).
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