{"id":8595,"date":"2023-08-07T13:05:14","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T11:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=8595"},"modified":"2023-08-07T13:05:14","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T11:05:14","slug":"orban-szerint-nem-epul-kinai-vegyianyag-eloszto-kozben-a-beruhazas-iratait-azert-titkolja-a-kormany-mert-dontest-keszitenek-elo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/orban-szerint-nem-epul-kinai-vegyianyag-eloszto-kozben-a-beruhazas-iratait-azert-titkolja-a-kormany-mert-dontest-keszitenek-elo\/","title":{"rendered":"Orb\u00e1n szerint nem \u00e9p\u00fcl k\u00ednai vegyianyag-eloszt\u00f3. K\u00f6zben a beruh\u00e1z\u00e1s iratait az\u00e9rt titkolja a korm\u00e1ny, mert d\u00f6nt\u00e9st k\u00e9sz\u00edtenek el\u0151"},"content":{"rendered":"

”The suggestion is not serious, such a chemical hub factory will not be built. You can sleep well at night [you shouldn\u2019t worry about it],” Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n said in Parliament<\/a> on July 3. He was replying to a question by an opposition MP after Direkt36 had written based on government documents<\/a> that a Chinese railway chemical trade hub could be set up in the XXIII district of Budapest (Soroks\u00e1r), and in Z\u00e1hony, a town at the Ukrainian border, through which China could supply chemical plants and battery factories with various chemical raw materials not only in Hungary but all over Europe. (In Direkt36’s article and the documents obtained, however, there was no mention of building a “factory”, the project is about rail transport and logistics of Chinese chemicals.)<\/p>\n

In its public communications, the Orb\u00e1n government strongly denied the leaked plans. However, in response to a public information request by Direkt36, the government replied in a way that suggests that preparations for the project have been made.<\/p>\n

In our previous article, we reported that according to one of the leaked documents, Antal Rog\u00e1n, the head of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office in charge of the project, wrote a letter of support to Chinese counterparts in February 2023. When we tried to obtain this letter (and other related documents) from the Cabinet Office in a public information request, Rog\u00e1n’s ministry refused to release it, claiming that the letter is considered “data used for supporting a decision”. So the ministry did not deny the existence of such a letter, but refused to show it to us because its disclosure would prevent the ministry from carrying out its official tasks.<\/p>\n

Because of this, Direkt36 is suing the Prime Minister\u2019s Cabinet Office for the disclosure of the documents, with the help of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU).<\/p>\n

Support Direkt36 and get exclusive insight into our investigations!<\/a><\/div>\n

After our article was published on Telex’s website, the government, repeating Orb\u00e1n’s words, responded to Telex that “the Prime Minister and the government have made it clear that they do not support the establishment of a chemical trade hub and therefore no such facility will be built in Hungary. Everything else is just scaremongering and fake news.”<\/p>\n

According to internal government documents previously obtained by Direkt36, the decision on the Chinese rail chemical trade hub project was made this spring, and the documents also indicated that the formal agreement between the Hungarian and Chinese parties is planned to be signed in September 2023. These documents, which were drafted in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office, referred to the rail project as the \u201cEurope-China Chemical Trade and Dual HUB System\u201d.<\/p>\n

The documents also stated that China could send up to 2 million unit containers of chemicals to Europe by rail in a year. One of the locations chosen as the European logistics center for this project is a facility in Soroks\u00e1r which is in the immediate neighborhood of residential areas, and which had a capacity of only 230,000 unit containers per year in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201dI can assure you that no establishment will take place”<\/strong><\/h2>\n

After the publication of our article, Gergely Kar\u00e1csony, Mayor of Budapest, described the project as a “toxic dump”, and the Municipal Assembly of Budapest \u2013 with the support of Fidesz mayors \u2013immediately adopted a resolution in an attempt to prevent the establishment of the chemical trade hub. Following fierce protests, government officials even began to deny the existence of the plans, including the Fidesz-backed mayor of Soroks\u00e1r. The government told<\/a> RTL\u2019s evening news program after Direkt36\u2019s report that “no such decision has been made, so all questions are premature.” Fidesz vice-chairman Szil\u00e1rd N\u00e9meth wrote on Facebook<\/a> that “this is a lie of Kari Geri [Gergely Kar\u00e1csony] and a fake news of the Soros media (Direkt36, Telex).”<\/p>\n

Even Antal Rog\u00e1n, head of the Prime Minister\u2019s Cabinet Office involved in the preparation of the project, denied the plans for the chemical trade hub. This is according to a letter that was sent by Rog\u00e1n to Soroks\u00e1r mayor Ferenc Bese on July 7, then published by Bese on Facebook. In the letter, titled “Information regarding the chemical trade hub investment”, Rog\u00e1n wrote the following: “Dear Mr. Mayor, I have received your letter and can inform you of the following. In the case referred to in your letter, the Government is not negotiating and I can assure you on behalf of the Prime Minister that no chemical trade hub will be set up in Soroks\u00e1r or anywhere else. Please acknowledge my statement!”<\/p>\n

Afterwards, Direkt36 sent several questions to the Mayor of Soroks\u00e1r. Among other things, we asked whether Bese was reassured by Antal Rog\u00e1n’s answer, whether he had met personally either Rog\u00e1n or then-State Secretary Bence Tuzson, who had previously negotiated the Chinese chemical project, and whether he had asked to see the documents on the Chinese chemical trade hub prepared by the Prime Minister\u2019s Cabinet Office. However, the Soroks\u00e1r Mayor\u2019s office, as before, has not responded to our request.<\/p>\n

\u201dData supporting decision-making\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Because of the contradiction between the government’s public communication and the internal government documents we obtained, Direkt36 has submitted a public information request to the Prime Minister’s Office for the disclosure of the correspondence between the Prime Minister\u2019s Cabinet Office and the Chinese partners of the chemical trade hub project, including the letter in which Antal Rog\u00e1n \u2013 according to the leaked documents \u2013 officially supported the Chinese chemical trade hub’s plans on behalf of the Hungarian government. One of the documents states that “for the project to be implemented in Hungary and to take advantage of this unique opportunity, Minister Antal Rog\u00e1n sent a letter of support to the Chinese side on February 3, 2023.”<\/p>\n

Although the Cabinet Office refused our public information request on July 18, their reasoning behind the refusal implied that they were indeed working on the preparation of the chemical trade hub project and that some sort of decision-making process had been initiated.<\/p>\n

The Cabinet Office wrote that the requested package of letters \u2013 containing Rog\u00e1n’s letter of support and the replies sent by the Chinese counterparts \u2013 was “data supporting decision-making”, which they were not obliged to release under the law “if the data also serves to support a future decision, or disclosure of the data would undermine the lawful functioning of the public authority or the exercise of its functions and powers free from improper external influence, in particular the freedom of the source of the data to express its views in the preparation of decisions.”<\/p>\n

\"\"

Response from the Prime Minister’s Office to our public information request<\/p><\/div>\n

Rog\u00e1n’s letter was also requested by opposition MP M\u00e1rton Tompos (Momentum party) through a similar public information request. “Please provide me Antal Rog\u00e1n’s letter of support sent to the Chinese on February 3, 2023 on the implementation of the dual chemical trade hub system in Hungary,” wrote Tompos. On July 28, he received the same rejection as Direkt36 with the Cabinet Office using the same excuse, that the letter is “data supporting decision-making.” (Tompos shared this correspondence with us.)<\/p>\n

After this, Direkt36, with the help of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), is filing a lawsuit against the Prime Minister\u2019s Cabinet Office headed by Antal Rog\u00e1n to obtain Rog\u00e1n’s letter and the Chinese responses to it.<\/p>\n

What could Rog\u00e1n have written to the Chinese?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As we have revealed in our previous article, the Europe-China Chemical Trade and Dual HUB System project is linked to Antal Rog\u00e1n and his entourage on several fronts. The Chinese side has negotiated with two companies, the Austrian state-owned Rail Cargo Hungaria and a newly founded Hungarian company with unknown ownership, Acemil Plc. The latter is linked to Rog\u00e1n’s confidant, lawyer Bal\u00e1zs Kert\u00e9sz, and, according to a Chinese online report, Kert\u00e9sz was personally involved in one of the negotiations on the project.<\/p>\n

The Chinese chemical trade hub project in Hungary also needs government support, and according to leaked documents, this is provided by the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office. On the Ministry’s side, former State Secretary Bence Tuzson \u2013 who has since been promoted to Minister of Justice \u2013 personally attended a meeting at the BILK Terminal in Soroks\u00e1r, the logistics facility that would be the location of the chemical trade hub facility in Budapest. We also learned from these leaked documents that the government\u2019s official letter of support was sent to the Chinese by Antal Rog\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

Although we have not received this specific letter because of the Cabinet Office\u2019s decision, the documents we obtained earlier include a longer section titled “The Next Step”, which describes the wording of the government’s letter of support and exactly who should receive it.<\/p>\n

According to this chapter, the implementation of the project requires the Hungarian government to express its “willingness to participate and support in writing\u201d. In addition, the letter should refer to “the close Hungarian-Chinese bilateral relations, mentioning that Hungary was the first European country to join the Belt and Road Initiative, one of the most important projects of Chinese President Xi Jinping”. The letter also stresses Hungary’s good potential: “Hungary has an extremely good geolocation, perfect for establishing a logistics and transshipment hub (…) Our country wants to become a gateway to Europe [for China], which has already been recognized by several Chinese companies”. The text also mentions that the Hungarian side proposes Z\u00e1hony and the BILK Terminal in Soroks\u00e1r as the location for the Europe-China Chemical Trade and Dual HUB System project.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Text of the document “The next step”<\/p><\/div>\n

If the court decides that Rog\u00e1n’s letter is a matter of public interest, it may be revealed to what extent its content is identical to these proposals.<\/p>\n

We used the\u00a0Opten<\/a>\u00a0service to obtain company registration data.<\/em><\/p>\n

Illustration: P\u00e9ter Somogyi\u00a0 (Szarvas) \/ Telex<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Direkt36 reported based on leaked documents that a large-scale Chinese chemical trade hub would be set up in Budapest and the town of Z\u00e1hony, the Orb\u00e1n government has denied the plans. However, a letter sent by Orb\u00e1n\u2019s chief of staff on the matter has been withheld from the public because it is considered as “data supporting decision-making”. Direkt36 is suing the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office for the documents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8599,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-telex.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16],"tags":[168,170,478,290,513],"ppma_author":[549,539],"class_list":["post-8595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-az-allam-tanacsadoi","category-magyar-kulpolitika","tag-kina","tag-kinai-kapcsolatok","tag-kozerdeku-adatigenyles","tag-rogan-antal","tag-vegyianyag","author-cap-szabolcs","author-cap-kamilla"],"authors":[{"term_id":549,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-szabolcs","display_name":"Szabolcs","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""},{"term_id":539,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-kamilla","display_name":"Kamilla","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8595"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}