{"id":7300,"date":"2021-09-17T10:59:21","date_gmt":"2021-09-17T08:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=7300"},"modified":"2022-10-11T22:30:38","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T20:30:38","slug":"lemondott-az-antall-jozsef-tudaskozpont-tobb-vezetoje-is-miota-a-direkt36-megirta-hogyan-szortak-a-kozpenzt-az-intezetnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/lemondott-az-antall-jozsef-tudaskozpont-tobb-vezetoje-is-miota-a-direkt36-megirta-hogyan-szortak-a-kozpenzt-az-intezetnel\/","title":{"rendered":"Resignations follow our expos\u00e9 of lavish spending at a pro-government think tank"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four members of the management of Antall J\u00f3zsef Knowledge Center (AJKC) have resigned, including all three members of the supervisory board and the chairman of the board of trustees, Gy\u00f6rgy N\u00f3gr\u00e1di, a security policy analyst known for his frequent appearances in pro-government media.<\/p>\n

All have confirmed their resignation to Direkt36 but refused to comment in detail. Some, however, indicated that their decision was at least partly due to the findings of Direkt36. Our investigation has revealed how the management of the government-backed think tank spent public money on luxurious trips, the director\u2019s ever-rising income, expensive items, and PR stories. Some of the former officials found it important to stress that they were no longer in contact with AJKC Director P\u00e9ter Antall (the son of the late Prime Minister J\u00f3zsef Antall, after whom the think tank was named).<\/p>\n

In our article published in May<\/a>, Direkt36 uncovered the irregularities of spending at AJKC, which has so far been supported by the Orb\u00e1n government with almost five bn HUF (14.3 mn EUR) from taxpayers’ money. Based on internal documents, financial reports, and information from sources familiar with AJKC\u2019s affairs, we concluded, among other things, that the institution\u2019s management made 15 to 20 foreign business trips a year and usually stayed in luxury hotels.<\/p>\n

At times, they also spent public money on private trips, private hospital services, professional cameras, and branded suitcases. The institution also functions like a family business: P\u00e9ter Antall’s wife is the deputy director, and the wife’s twin sister also works there. Last year, P\u00e9ter Antall’s earnings reached a monthly average of HUF 6.9 mn (19,700 EUR). We also found out that while AJKC received hundreds of millions from the government each year, it still became heavily indebted. So much so that in the end, taxpayer\u2019s money had to be spent once again to help it out of the debt trap.<\/p>\n

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The first one to leave was P\u00e1l Antall, a relative of AJKC director P\u00e9ter Antall, who resigned from the chair of the supervisory board back in April, before our article was published. At that time, Direkt36 was already investigating the story and had sent several questions to the institution, but, according to P\u00e1l Antall, his resignation was partly due to personal reasons, and he says he was not aware of our investigation at the time. However, he noted that he had regularly drawn the management\u2019s attention to the importance of \u201cprudent operation\u201d in internal forums in the past. He added that he has not been in touch with either AJKC or P\u00e9ter Antall since his resignation.<\/p>\n

The next member of the supervisory board, lawyer P\u00e9ter K\u00e1llay left in June, after our investigation was published. He stressed that he followed the chairman P\u00e1l Antall with his decision to resign. He refused to answer further questions but stated that \u201cthe problems arisen\u201d need to be investigated, thus welcoming the Prime Minister\u2019s Office\u2019s decision to look into the financial matters of AJKC. (The Prime Minister\u2019s Office, the main donor of the think tank, decided to launch an internal investigation in response to our revelations back in May. However, their investigation has not been concluded so far. AJKC is now also under a tax audit<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

After K\u00e1llay, the third member of the supervisory board resigned as well. Egyptologist Zolt\u00e1n Bartos was also reluctant to answer questions, saying that his decision was not coordinated with the other members. He said that his resignation happened partly because of media articles, and partly because how AJKC handled the scandal following the publications.<\/p>\n

Bartos did not wish to explain what his problem was exactly with AJKC\u2019s reactions. The institution published a statement after Direkt36\u2019s article, stating, among other things, that “the foundation considers the publication of articles that deliberately defame the AJKC to be an unfortunate side effect of the upcoming election campaign,\u201d but no correction was requested for the specific claims in our article and no lawsuit was filed.<\/p>\n

Gy\u00f6rgy N\u00f3gr\u00e1di, the chairman of the board of trustees has also resigned. Although P\u00e9ter Antall is the operational leader of AJKC as a director, formally and legally the most powerful official is the chairman of the board of trustees. The chairman is responsible for signing official documents like grant agreements and yearly financial reports. For example, AJKC\u2019s latest annual report for 2020, published in June, is signed by N\u00f3gr\u00e1di.<\/p>\n

N\u00f3gr\u00e1di resigned on the 23rd<\/sup> of June, he confirmed to Direkt36. He did not know whether his successor has already been chosen. He added that he resigned writing a formal letter to P\u00e9ter Antall, citing his reasons, but refused to share them publicly.<\/p>\n

Gy\u00f6rgy N\u00f3gr\u00e1di is a frequent guest in pro-government media as a security policy expert. He has been a member of the board of trustees of AJTK since 2014 and became its chairman when the previous president Zsolt Becsey was dismissed in April 2017. Becsey had to leave after he had reviewed AJKC\u2019s financial records and signaled his concerns to the main donor, the Prime Minister\u2019s Office. According to several sources familiar with the affairs of the institution and N\u00f3gr\u00e1di himself, he and P\u00e9ter Antall maintain a friendly relationship.<\/p>\n

N\u00f3gr\u00e1di emphasized that during his years as a chairman, he never received a penny for his work. However, internal documents previously obtained by Direkt36 show that N\u00f3gr\u00e1d did benefit from his years spent at AJKC. He attended some of the work trips (for example, they made a Scandinavian tour with P\u00e9ter Antall in 2016), and some of his conference-related accommodation expenses were also paid for. Besides, the security policy analyst’s own NGO, the Blue Shield Hungary Foundation, registered in 2019, operated at AJKC’s headquarters until this February, and P\u00e9ter Antall was a member of its board of trustees. According to N\u00f3gr\u00e1di, this is not important because Blue Shield never cost money for AJKC.<\/p>\n

Antall J\u00f3zsef Knowledge Center did not react to our questions concerning the resignation of its officials.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Direkt36 exposed controversial expenditures at a publicly funded think tank ran by the son of a former PM, several officials decided to leave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[42,43],"ppma_author":[444],"class_list":["post-7300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-az-allam-tanacsadoi","tag-antall-jozsef-tudaskozpont","tag-antall-peter","author-wirth-zsuzsanna"],"authors":[{"term_id":444,"user_id":7,"is_guest":0,"slug":"wirth-zsuzsanna","display_name":"Zsuzsanna Wirth","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/av_Wirth_Zsuzsa.png","url2x":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/av_Wirth_Zsuzsa.png"},"description":"[:hu]Az ELTE hallgat\u00f3jak\u00e9nt kezdett az Orig\u00f3n\u00e1l dolgozni, ahol t\u00edz \u00e9vet t\u00f6lt\u00f6tt a politika rovat \u00fajs\u00e1g\u00edr\u00f3jak\u00e9nt. H\u00e1romszor is elnyerte a Min\u0151s\u00e9gi \u00dajs\u00e1g\u00edr\u00e1s\u00e9rt d\u00edjat, ezen k\u00edv\u00fcl a G\u0151b\u00f6ly\u00f6s J\u00f3zsef Soma Alap\u00edtv\u00e1ny k\u00fcl\u00f6nd\u00edjasa is. Dolgozott a Forbesnak \u00e9s a Marie Claire-nek, 2016 \u00f3ta pedig a Direkt36 \u00fajs\u00e1g\u00edr\u00f3ja, 2022 \u00f3ta szerkeszt\u0151je is. 2022-ben az OCCRP \u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjasak\u00e9nt tanult a t\u00e9nyfelt\u00e1r\u00f3 \u00fajs\u00e1g\u00edr\u00e1sban alkalmazhat\u00f3 OSINT \u00e9s m\u00e1s kutat\u00e1si technik\u00e1kr\u00f3l. Az ELTE m\u00e9dia szak\u00e1n \u00f3raad\u00f3k\u00e9nt \u00fajs\u00e1g\u00edr\u00e1st tan\u00edt.\r\n[:en]Zsuzsanna started her journalistic carreer at Origo, where she spent ten years at the news desk, covering and investigating various political and social issues as well as corruption and organized crime. She was awarded the Prize for Quality Journalism three times, and is also a special awards winner of the G\u0151b\u00f6ly\u00f6s J\u00f3zsef Soma Foundation. She worked for the Hungarian editions of Forbes and Marie Claire. She has worked at Direkt36 as a journalist since 2016, and as an editor since 2022. In 2022, she studied OSINT techniques as an OCCRP Research Fellow. She teaches journalism at ELTE\u2019s media department.[:]","first_name":"Zsuzsanna","last_name":"Wirth","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9391,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300\/revisions\/9391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7300"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}