“Hungary’s Immigration and Asylum Office does not plan to carry out further investigations or to revoke the permanent residence permit of Atiya Khoury,” Zsuzsanna Végh, head of the immigration office told Hungarian MP Márta Demeter. Direkt36 and 444.hu recently revealed in a joint investigation that Khoury, the moneyman of the Syrian dictator received permanent residence permit in Hungary through the country’s residency bond program.

After the publication of our article, Demeter announced that she would request further information about the two Syrians named in our article. Hungary’s Immigration and Asylum Office confirmed to Demeter that Atiya Khoury bought Hungarian residence bond in 2014 and, in exchange, he received a temporary residency permit the same year. Later, he also applied for a permanent residence permit, which he received at the beginning of 2017.

This date is significant as Khoury was put on the US Treasury Department sanction list in the summer of 2016. According to the sanction documents, Khoury owns and operates Moneta Transfer & Exchange, a financial services network that deals with currency exchange and cash transfers and has played an important role in maintaining Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Khoury is accused of moving cash between Syria, Lebanon and Russia.

(UPDATE 23.10.2025: An earlier version of this article included the name of a Syrian citizen suspected by Italian authorities of being a member of an international money laundering criminal organization. While the article was being prepared, one of the man’s relatives told Direkt36 that he had purchased a residency bond, but this was later denied by the Syrian citizen himself and by the Hungarian immigration authorities. Therefore, we have removed his name and details about him from the article.)

Márta Demeter’s request to look into the official documents related to the Syrian’s status in Hungary was refused by the immigration office. The office did not give any information about the relatives of Khoury and did not say whether the family members purchased residency bonds.

According to Végh, Hungarian authorities found no risk during Atiya Khoury’s security screening and raised no objection against granting them Hungarian residence permit. She also said that the Immigration and Asylum Office does not plan to carry out further investigations or to revoke their permanent residence permit of the Syrian in spite of the fact that Khoury is currently on a U.S. sanction list. With Hungarian permanent residence permit, Khoury can currently move freely in the Schengen area.

Before the publication of our article, Direkt36 and 444 contacted all relevant state authorities including the Immigration and Asylum Office, but all of them denied giving any information on the status of Khoury.

After the publication of our article, the Ministry of Interior issued a press release stating that “the article of 444.hu and Direkt36 is far from reality and only aims to cause uproar ahead of the elections,” but did not refute any information of our article. According to the press release, neither of the Syrians named is on the sanction list of the European Union, but we did not state this in our article either. The Ministry of Interior added that “one of the individuals named in the article had already been living in Hungary during the government of Gyurcsány-Bajnai,” but it did not deny that he participated in Hungary’s residency bond program between 2013 and 2017.

Cover photo: Bence Kiss, 444.hu