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HATC SAMPLE EDITION:
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28th October, 2026
Former BSE firm at centre of ventilator fraud
The tax office NAV has issued an arrest warrant for the former CEO of OTT-One, Bálint Májer, who was involved in the 2020 ventilator procurement.
The tax office said in a statement that its officials are investigating suspected budget fraud and money-laundering committed by a criminal organisation in connection with the 2020 ventilator procurements by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade led by Péter Szijjártó.
Assets worth Ft 1.5 billion in total have been seized and one man has been arrested.
In the statement, the NAV wrote that at the top of the criminal organization was “a joint-stock company previously listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange”, but they did not say which company it was. However, the issue of a warrant to search Májer’s residence makes clear that the company concerned could be OTT-One, which had been previously present on the Hungarian stock exchange.
The company was able to participate in the ventilator business during the coronavirus pandemic for many billions of forints. When it still had real activities, it did not deal with medical devices, but was an IT company.
The company also had contact with China, and Májer even gave a lecture in China.
Májer previously told Telex that “when Covid hit in March 2020, and countries were scrambling for masks and ventilators, everyone wanted to buy such machines, at any price.”
Despite the huge deals, there was no trace of money around OTT-One in 2024, and it had not produced a balance sheet for years.
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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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