OMRI DAILY DIGEST
No. 212, 1 November 1996

HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT TO PROBE OPPOSITION'S EARLIER OFFICE DEALS. The
Hungarian parliament's constitutional committee on 30 October agreed to
investigate deals in which the opposition Young Democrats and the
Hungarian Democratic Forum sold their party headquarters in 1992,
Hungarian dailies reported on 1 November. The two parties were entitled
to office buildings under a 1991 government resolution on allocation of
office space to parliamentary political parties. Both parties sold their
properties ten days after receiving them and then blocked setting up a
committee to examine the deals. The Young Democrats claim the governing
parties' insistence to investigate those deals is in retaliation for
their having uncovered a privatization scandal that recently embarrassed
the government. -- Zsofia Szilagyi

HUNGARY TO DISCLOSE DETAILS OF SECRET ACCORD WITH SWITZERLAND.
According
to Hungarian foreign ministry officials, the Hungarian and Swiss
governments signed a secret accord in 1973 on the transfer of assets
belonging to Hungarian victims of the Holocaust kept in Swiss banks,
international media reported on 31 October. Officials, however, do not
know whether the transfer of funds was actually carried out. The former
governor of the National Bank of Hungary, Janos Fekete, who claimed no
previous knowledge of the 1973 accord, said recently that Hungary had
tried to recover those assets, but the Swiss authorities--citing banking
secrecy rules--refused their request. The contents of the accord would
not affect the ongoing negotiations on Jewish compensation, the ministry
added. -- Zsofia Szilagyi

[As of 12:00 CET]

Compiled by Valentina Huber