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Photo credits @ Hungarian prosecutor's office

Lorry drivers take down corrupt border agents in Hungary

Thanks to the drivers of a German lorry, two Hungarian border guards have been taken into police custody for demanding a €1,500 bribe to let the lorry through the border.

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According to a statement by the Hungarian prosecutor’s office, two border police officers were on passport duty at the Ártánd border crossing on the Romanian-Hungarian border in October 2022 when a German lorry wanted to leave Hungary at around 23:00.

The driver-on-duty gave the border guards the documents needed to leave the country. The border guard stopped the lorry and told the driver that he had found so many deficiencies in the vehicle’s documents that a fine of around €4,000 was due, and suggested that “it could be solved for €1,500″.

The drivers of the lorry denied that there were any irregularities with the vehicle and refused to pay, saying that they only had €500 – which would have satisfied the border guard – but initially refused to hand it over either.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the border police officer repeatedly told them that he and his colleague would only allow them to cross into Romania if they paid, and then made them wait without doing anything.

After about two hours, despite the fact that there was no legal basis for detaining them and imposing a fine, the two drivers handed over three hundred euros and seventy thousand forints (approx 180 euros) to the border police officer, and when the officer refused to pay them, two hundred Romanian lei (approx 40 euro). The border police then allowed the lorry to cross the border, but did not record the details of the crossing in the register.

The Prosecutor’s Office ordered the detention of the two offenders, questioned them as suspects and successfully applied for their arrest. The defendants and their lawyers have appealed against the decision of the Military Council of the Debrecen Court of First Instance, the prosecutor’s office concluded.

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