<\/p>\n
The Budapest Court of Appeal upheld the ruling that forces the Prime Minister\u2019s Office to publish details of two trips of J\u00e1nos L\u00e1z\u00e1r, the government official leading the office. The office has to disclose the names of the hotels where Mr. L\u00e1z\u00e1r stayed at during his visits to Switzerland and Italy in 2013, according to the decision announced on Thursday. The office also has to reveal how much was paid at each hotel.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister\u2019s Office will have 15 days following the delivery of the written ruling to release the information which may shed light on why the hotel bills on these two trips were much higher than bills on other high-level government officials\u2019 trips.<\/p>\n
Mr. L\u00e1z\u00e1r said that he would turn the to the Curia (the highest judicial authority in Hungary) for a review of the sentence. This, however, should not affect the execution of the \u00a0decision of the Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n
The public information lawsuit was launched by Andr\u00e1s Peth\u0151, a co-founder of Direkt36, last year when he was still working for newsportal Origo. Transparency International (TI) provided legal assistance for Peth\u0151, who was represented in the Budapest Court of Appeal by Daniel Karsai, an attorney co-operating with TI.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit started after the Prime Minister\u2019s Office had refused to answer questions about some of Mr. L\u00e1z\u00e1r\u2019s trips that resulted in unusually high hotel bills. On a 2012 November three-day trip to England the hotel stay cost more than 3000 euros, on a 2013 March two-day trip to Switzerland it was nearly 1547 euros, and on another two-day trip to Italy in July 2013 it was more than 1920 euros. No other trips of other officials of the Prime Minister\u2019s Office carried hotel bills that were nearly as high as these in 2012 and 2013, a period examined by Peth\u0151.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister\u2019s Office argued that the trips\u2019 details can not be released for national security reasons. They said that the trips were related to Mr. L\u00e1z\u00e1r\u2019s duties as the supervisor of the Information Agency, the government\u2019s intelligence office.<\/p>\n
The latest ruling does not cover Mr. L\u00e1z\u00e1r\u2019s visit to England. The Prime Minister\u2019s Office disclosed during the initial trial in the lower court that there was a confidential document pertaining to that trip. The court requested the document but the government has failed to provide it yet, delaying the decision. The trial over the England trip is still continuing at the lower court, with the next hearing scheduled for April.<\/p>\n
Mr. L\u00e1z\u00e1r issued a statement after the lower court\u2019s decision on the Swiss and Italian trips last May. He announced that he would pay back the hotel expenses to the state budget. He also said that he would be ready to provide the court with details about his \u201ctravel habits\u201d. Later, however, his office appealed the decision.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The court ruling forces the Prime Minister’s Office to disclose details of two trips of J\u00e1nos L\u00e1z\u00e1r, head of the office. This may shed light on why his trips resulted in hotel bills that were unusually high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[440],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lazar-janos-utazasai","author-petho-andras"],"authors":[{"term_id":440,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"petho-andras","display_name":"Andr\u00e1s Peth\u0151","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/av_Peto_Andras.png","url2x":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/av_Peto_Andras.png"},"description":"[:hu]Andr\u00e1s a Direkt36 egyik alap\u00edt\u00f3ja, szerkeszt\u0151je \u00e9s \u00fcgyvezet\u0151 igazgat\u00f3ja. Kor\u00e1bban az Origo vezet\u0151 szerkeszt\u0151je volt, miel\u0151tt a port\u00e1l r\u00e9sze lett a korm\u00e1ny propagandag\u00e9pezet\u00e9nek. Andr\u00e1s dolgozott a BBC World Service-n\u00e9l Londonban \u00e9s a Washington Post t\u00e9nyfelt\u00e1r\u00f3 rovat\u00e1n\u00e1l is. R\u00e9szt vett sz\u00e1mos nagy nemzetk\u00f6zi nyomoz\u00f3 projektben, k\u00f6zt\u00fck a Panama-iratok feldolgoz\u00e1s\u00e1ban. K\u00e9tszer is elnyerte a legjobbnak \u00edt\u00e9lt t\u00e9nyfelt\u00e1r\u00f3 cikkek szerz\u0151inek j\u00e1r\u00f3 Soma-d\u00edjat. T\u00f6bbsz\u00f6r tanult \u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjjal az Egyes\u00fclt \u00c1llamokban: 2008-ban a World Press Institute programj\u00e1ban, 2012-13-ban Humphrey-\u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjask\u00e9nt a Marylandi Egyetemen, 2019-20-ban pedig Nieman-\u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjask\u00e9nt a Harvard Egyetemen. Andr\u00e1s t\u00f6bb magyar egyetemen is tan\u00edtott \u00fajs\u00e1g\u00edr\u00f3 kurzusokat.\r\n[:en]Andr\u00e1s is a co-founder, editor and executive director of Direkt36. Previously, he was a senior editor for leading Hungarian news site Origo before it had been transformed into the government\u2019s propaganda outlet. He also worked for the BBC World Service in London and was a reporter at the investigative unit of The Washington Post. He has contributed to several international reporting projects, including The Panama Papers. He twice won the Soma Prize, the prestigious annual award dedicated to investigative journalism in Hungary. He was a World Press Institute fellow in 2008, a Humphrey fellow at the University of Maryland in 2012\/13, and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2019\/20. Andr\u00e1s has taught journalism courses at Hungarian universities.[:]","first_name":"Andr\u00e1s","last_name":"Peth\u0151","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9141,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions\/9141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}