According to breaking news reports from ecoline.hu, Péter Oszkó, the former Hungarian finance minister, has admitted that he is sitting on the board of Wizz Air since last April. The news came from Ryanair, as the company distributed copies of a Wizz Air yearly report aiming to prove that Wizz was in a bad shape financially. This report unintentionally contained the information about the MSZP government member, which then Oszkó admitted.
Malév went bankrupt after Wizz-air reported them to the EU over Malév’s state support which the company needed badly to say alive. The news was a shock to many, because to the public Oszkó was portraying himself as someone who did everything to save Malév, Wizz Air’s heavy competitor. Oszkó launched into an anger filled tirade on the internet, against the Fidesz government because an immediate successor to Malév was not established by the time Malév went bankrupt. If Hungary does as Oszkó suggested and establishes a successor national airline, Oszkó’s company, Wizz Air would have been very badly hurt.
The news already looks like it will quickly develop into a huge scandal, hurting Oszkó and possibly Gordon Bajnai, the former PM, whose cabinet Oszkó served as finance minister. Why and how Oszkó managed to hide his involvement with Wizz Air while acting out as a champion for Malév is not immediately known.
In his writings, Oszkó was saying, he is deeply committed to establishing the best possible situation for Malév, for the good of the country. Oszkó played a massive role in Malév’s fate, as he was overseeing many financial transactions regarding the company including its 2010 renationalization following a sell-off to a Russian investor only a few years prior.
When called for comment, Oszkó only said that “the information wasn’t news worthy”, confirming that the story was definitely news worthy. Several magazines and newspapers printed it immediately, without waiting to gather more information for a longer article.
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