"Gyrgy Szilvsy, Head of Hungarian Secret Services, has set up a working team to examine the 80,000 pages of documents pertaining to the oil adulteration scandal of the 1990s, to see which of them can be made public.The documents were classified secret for 85 years in 2000 following a parliamentary investigation.
Szilvsy said a large number of official documents were destroyed between 1998 and 2002. Government spokeswoman Bernadett Budai said it is not known who destroyed the documents, nor why.
Meanwhile former police operative officer Istvn Sndor, who co-operated with investigative journalist Irn Krmn in writing a book on the oil scandal, was questioned for two hours at the National Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday.
Krmn is recovering in hospital after being attacked and kidnapped last Friday and dumped along the Danube embankment. She has for years been trying to find out who benefited from the oil adulteration activities of the early 1990s. Beginning in 1990, state-subsidised heating oil was dyed red, in order to distinguish it from non-subsidised oil.
Before long, scammers found ways to bleach the dye out of the oil and sell it at a much higher price. It has long been suspected that customs guards and high-level politicians were involved, but no-one has ever been charged or convicted in the matter. The practice faded when the dual-pricing system was abolished in 1995.
Sndor admitted that he stopped working with Krmn some time ago. He said she developed a personal relationship with Tams Portik, a former marketing manager of Energol, a company implicated in the oil scandal.
Krmn confirmed to news website Index that she has a romantic relationship with Portik, but said that never influenced her work. Portik was at one time the most wanted man in Hungary, before criminal proceedings were terminated against him in 2003 due to the statute of limitations.
Krmn is no longer giving statements to the media, a woman who answered her telephone told Npszabadsg, adding that anything Krmn has to say can be found on her blog or statements made available to state news agency MTI."
Source: Hungary Around the Clock.
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28.06.2007