As part of the Dubai Unlocked investigation, Direkt36 has found that a company with links to the inner circle of Ádám Matolcsy, the son of the Hungarian central bank’s president, has bought several luxury apartments in Dubai.

In an ongoing criminal case prosecutors claim officials of the Ministry of Agriculture fraudulently disbursed HUF 2,2 billion in 2019. Direkt36 has learned that authorities are now leading inquiries into how half of that money ended up in the Swiss bank account of a Panamanian offshore company tied to the well known Hungarian business tycoon Kristóf Nobilis.

The energy minister had a company in Cyprus at a time when Viktor Orbán was attacking others for such businesses. Direkt36 obtained the documents of this deal, which involved hundreds of millions of forints, as part of the international investigative project called Cyprus Confidential.

The revelations about offshore firms brought to light by the source behind the Panama Papers toppled government leaders and spawned thousands of investigations. Now for the first time the source gave an interview.

Jenő Faller told Direkt36 that when he founded the offshore company it was a “fashionable” thing to do.

The offshore leaks known as the Pandora Papers show that Hungay has been promoted to service providers as the new Cyprus or Malta. A lawyer wrote that Hungary can give an “onfshore face” to offshore companies.

Nearly 12 million confidential documents were leaked about secret offshore companies, investigated by the world’s largest international collaboration of journalists. Direkt36 was also part of the project and revealed that influential Hungarian pro-government figures including Balázs Kertész and Gellért Jászai also had offshore interests.

Suspicious transactions have been routinely moved through the Hungarian banking system, Direkt36 has revealed as part of the the global FinCENFiles investigation.

According to an internal document obtained by Direkt36 the state-owned Eximbank identified several risks related to a Budapest real estate development project. Nevertheless, it decided to financially support it with a loan worth millions of euros.

The so-called Eclipse scandal was one of the biggest corruption cases of the last two decades in Hungary. The new Panama Papers now reveal that a businessman with extensive connections to the government signed a consultancy contract with Eclipse through an offshore company.