Miklós Kásler

Miklós Kásler's Ministry of Human Resources (EMMI) oversaw Hungary's roughly 300-billion-forint 2020 ventilator procurement, in which the state bought over 17,000 units, a large share through a Malaysian-linked company network (GR Technologies SDN BHD), wiring some 176 billion forints to accounts in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. When Transparency International Hungary filed a freedom-of-information request asking how many surplus ventilators had been resold, the ministry refused, claiming it held no database in the requested format and was not obliged to create one. A Budapest court ruled against the ministry, which appealed; it later emerged that part of the procurement's records had already been destroyed in November 2021, barely twenty months after the contracts were signed. Transparency International's legal director said the timing and manner of the destruction suggested the ministry may have been trying to evade its disclosure obligations and conceal the data.