Hungarian audit office: Democratic Coalition breached accounting and campaign laws

The Democratic Coalition (DK) opposition party has slammed the government for “weaponising” the state audit office (ASZ), which had earlier censured DK for alleged party financing infringements.

The party successfully sued the state auditor to release documentation that it said would exonerate it of alleged wrongdoing, and a Budapest court also instructed ASZ to pay the party’s legal costs, DK’s director, László Sebián-Petrovszki, told a press briefing streamed on Facebook on Sunday.

“We European Hungarians won’t tolerate abuses of power and we reject all threats,” he said, accusing the government of using the state body for its own ends, “evoking the darkest of dictatorships”.

The auditor had demanded the party produce documents which DK said had been destroyed in a fire at the party’s headquarters in 2018, and in a related move the auditor had threatened to block DK’s public funding.