Part I — Situation overview

On 28 August 2026 Parliament elected Anna Róza Unger president of the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office (NVVH). Two days later, on 30 August, the president spoke in detail about how the organisation is starting, on RTL’s programme Házon kívül and in an interview given to Telex. The picture is far more concrete than at the time of the nomination debate: for the time being the office has no headquarters, no founding charter, no bank account, no identifier issued by the Central Statistical Office (KSH — the institution that publishes official statistical data), no rules of operation and no staff of its own. Unger plans an organisation of around 150 people, roughly half of whom would work in the investigative branch, and the first investigation may start at the end of September. Of the four deputy president positions one has so far been filled — Katalin Tasnády as deputy president for investigations — while new calls have to be issued for the public finance, prosecution and appellate posts, and, as the president emphasised, she has no say in their selection. The opening cases have already been selected by the deputy president for investigations, but they were not made public in the interest of the success of the inquiry.

The background is familiar: on 25 August MIAK wrote about the yardstick of selection, and on 28 August about the candidate’s measurable undertakings for the first year. What is new now is not the nomination but the operation. Three questions have come onto the agenda which did not exist in the earlier debates. The first is the order of magnitude: according to the president the sum of the public assets that have gone missing is between 10,000 and 60,000 billion forints — a sixfold band, without a published calculation methodology. The second is the apparatus: the 150 staff would largely be brought over from the police, the National Tax and Customs Administration and the prosecution service by way of secondment, assignment and detachment, which is at once a question about the rules of recruitment and about what happens to those bodies from which the specialists are taken. The third is contact: Unger said she accepts an informal approach from nobody — not even from the prime minister — and that anyone who wants an investigation should make the request through official channels.

MIAK’s reading: the political dispute around the office — the opposition’s “ÁVH” framing, the dissatisfaction within the governing camp over the person of the candidate, the public distance kept between the prime minister and the president — all point to the same gap. There is no public, pre-established rule on how this office selects cases, how it selects people and how it deals with politics. The credibility of an asset recovery body is decided not by who leads it but by whether its decisions can be reconstructed afterwards. The character of the problem is therefore not personal but one of procedural documentation — and precisely for that reason it can be remedied cheaply and quickly.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Each of the three questions facing the office has a worked-out frame in the literature. The 1999 study Governance Matters by Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Pablo Zoido-Lobatón (World Bank economists, creators of the governance quality indicator system) provides the yardstick for handling estimation uncertainty: for them even the aggregate indicator is not a precise figure but an estimate published together with a confidence band and a disclosed methodology — and that is exactly why it is usable. The book The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker (Austrian-American management thinker, the founder of the methodology of organisational effectiveness measurement) is about the fact that the greatest risk at the launch of an organisation is not inactivity but dispersion: the outcome is decided by the setting of priorities and by the quality of decisions about people. And the work Spin Dictators by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman (an economist and a political scientist, researchers of the workings of modern, non-violent autocracies) describes the pattern in which power acts against political opponents not by circumventing the law but by observing the forms of the law. This is precisely the risk to which the “ÁVH” accusation refers, and which the office has to exclude procedurally. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures, none of which requires an amendment of legislation, and none of which slows down the start of the first investigation.

3.1 A methodological annex to the estimate of public assets (within 90 days of the office being set up)

In its present form the band of 10,000–60,000 billion forints is usable neither for planning nor for accountability: the upper value is six times the lower one, and there is no published calculation behind it. MIAK proposes that within 90 days of being set up the NVVH publish a short methodological annex of no more than twenty pages. The annex must give the data sources of the estimate (public procurement databases, the state asset register, EU audit reports), the steps of the calculation, the assumptions applied, and what change of assumption causes the difference between the lower and the upper limit of the band. If some component cannot be estimated, that too has to be stated. The aim is not to make the figure more precise — that is not even possible at this stage — but to make the figure verifiable. In Kaufmann’s frame (see 6.4.1) this is the step that turns an uncertain estimate into a professional instrument rather than a political projectile. The proposal carries forward the logic of the A1 public money dashboard: whatever is asserted about public money should have a source.

3.2 A public, points-based recruitment protocol for the 150-strong staff (before the first recruitment wave)

The office’s staff would be brought over from the police, the tax authority and the prosecution service. This is professionally justified, but it carries two risks: the weakening of the expert corps of the sending bodies, and the possibility that selection happens on the basis of informal acquaintance — the president herself put it in terms of there being specific names about whom she knows they “will come”. MIAK proposes that before beginning the first recruitment wave the office publish the points-based criteria of selection (professional record, relevant case types, language and financial-analyst competence), the content of the conflict-of-interest filter, and the order of consultation under which the transfer from the sending bodies takes place. For those appointed to management posts, the wealth-proportionality certification under programme point KI7 should also be compulsory. The publicity of the protocol does not restrict the president’s room for manoeuvre: she may still recruit anyone she considers professionally suitable — but the decision will be examinable afterwards. Drucker’s argument (see 6.4.2) is precisely that decisions about people are an organisation’s most important and most irreversible decisions.

3.3 A contact log and annual publication (from the first day of operation)

The president has publicly stated that she does not accept informal approaches from political actors. This is an important commitment of principle, but as a verbal promise it cannot be verified, and it does not protect the office from subsequent accusations either. MIAK proposes that from the first day of operation the NVVH keep a contact log: every approach coming from a political actor, a government leader or a party political organisation should be recorded with the date, the name of the person approaching and the subject of the approach, and the log should then be published annually in aggregated form. The log contains no case data, so it does not endanger ongoing inquiries. This measure is the only real antidote to the risk described by Guriev and Treisman (see 6.4.3): not the promise but the documented trail. The A6 checks and balances programme point applies the same principle to the other constitutional institutions.

The three proposals are bound together by a single principle: every decision of the office that does not touch the investigative interest of a concrete case should be reconstructable afterwards. Behind the estimate there should be a calculation, behind recruitment a set of criteria, behind political contact a log. This is not mistrust towards the president — it is the protection that keeps the office standing even when the current leadership is no longer in office.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Public administration The office’s decisions become auditable; the withdrawal of staff from the sending bodies is put into a plannable order The documentation obligation is an administrative burden in the first weeks of set-up for an organisation not yet operating
Rule of law The procedural trail makes it harder for any later government to use the office as a political instrument The protocol may become formal if there is no external oversight behind it — the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) or a parliamentary committee
Economy The published estimation methodology makes recovery revenue usable in budgetary planning too The publicity of the methodology may show that the recoverable amount is closer to the lower end of the estimated band — politically awkward, professionally useful
Trust The promise that “we stop at nobody” gets measurable backing If the first cases do not produce quick results, the public yardstick can be turned against the office

The main question for weighing runs between transparency and the investigative interest. The office’s legitimate argument is that publicity about the details of ongoing cases harms the success of the proceedings — MIAK accepts this, and none of its proposals asks for the publication of case data. All three proposals are procedural in nature: the method of the estimate, the criteria of recruitment and the log of political contacts none of them reveal who is being investigated. The proposal tips over to the risk side if the public yardstick creates a timing expectation that the office cannot meet because of the length of the judicial phase. That is why it matters that the indicators should relate to the phase falling within the office’s own competence — the president herself pointed out that the length of court proceedings is not within her competence.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

The performance indicators below (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) measure the phase falling within the office’s own competence. They are MIAK’s proposals, not government decisions:

  • Methodological cover: whether the published methodological annex of the public asset estimate is available within 90 days of the office being set up (yes/no).
  • Recruitment transparency: what percentage of the 150-strong staff was taken on according to published, points-based criteria — proposed target: 100% after 12 months.
  • Procedural turnaround: the average time elapsed from the receipt of the documents to the first substantive investigative act, case by case — proposed target: under 60 days.
  • Soundness ratio: the proportion of reports examined by the office but closed without opening proceedings. This is the most important and the most easily misread indicator: if it is zero, that is not a sign of efficiency but of the absence of filtering.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message is simple: over the coming weeks the NVVH needs not an amendment of legislation but three public documents — the methodological annex of the estimate, the recruitment criteria and the contact log. All three can be produced within the office’s own competence, none of them requires a parliamentary decision, and none of them delays the first investigation planned for the end of September. MIAK asks this of the NVVH’s leadership, and asks the public to judge the office not by the person of its head but by the quality of its procedures.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play here. Accountability, because an office created for accountability cannot itself operate without accounting for its actions — if its own estimate and its own recruitment decisions cannot be verified, then it is not applying to itself the yardstick it applies to others. And data-drivenness, because in its present form the band of 10,000–60,000 billion is not data but an indication of orders of magnitude; it becomes data by disclosing how it was calculated. In the long run the office’s credibility will be decided not by how many names it has mentioned but by whether there was a verifiable calculation behind its assertions.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press, spectrum by spectrum

In the left-liberal band 444.hu and Telex focused on the office’s operational details: 444.hu highlighted the vacancy of the deputy president positions, the need to work out a risk assessment methodology, and the image of case selection as “we are not angling, we are casting a net”, while Telex put the distance kept over competences between the president and the prime minister in its headline. HVG carried the expert expectations and the realistic time horizon forward with two longer interviews (Dávid Jancsics, Nicholas Sárvári) — the latter headline expressly warning about the unreality of quick, spectacular results.

In the economic band Portfolio chose the narrowest, most purely factual framing: it carried the existence of an opening case as news, without evaluative comment.

In the governing-party and conservative band the emphasis fell elsewhere. Mandiner ran two different threads: one article set out the office’s cost side in detail (an annual operating budget of 10 billion forints, 2.3 billion forints of start-up funding from the residual budget of the abolished Sovereignty Protection Office, the president’s gross monthly salary of 5,017,810 forints and the deputy presidents’ salaries of close to 3.94 million forints each). The other article raised the risk of a political show trial in the form of an analyst’s comment. Magyar Nemzet sharpened the news towards the tension within the governing camp — towards the prime minister’s statement that “Anna Unger stays”.

The most interesting difference between the framings is that the office’s budgetary side was covered substantively during the day by the conservative band, while the question of rule-of-law risk was carried by the left-liberal band. Neither band asked the question of methodology — that is, where the figure of 10,000–60,000 billion comes from — even though both published the figure.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
Election of the NVVH’s president 28 August 2026 Parliament; 444.hu, 28 August 2026
Planned staff of the office approx. 150 people, roughly half in the investigative branch Anna Unger, RTL Házon kívül, 30 August 2026
Deputy president positions filled 1 of 4 (investigations: Katalin Tasnády) 444.hu and 24.hu, 30 August 2026
Planned start of the first investigation end of September 2026 Anna Unger, RTL Házon kívül
Estimated sum of the public assets gone missing HUF 10,000–60,000 billion Anna Unger; ATV, 31 August 2026
Annual operating budget HUF 10 billion Mandiner, 30 August 2026 (on the basis of the prime minister’s earlier statement)
Start-up funding HUF 2.3 billion from the residual budget of the abolished Sovereignty Protection Office Mandiner, 30 August 2026
Combined annual basic salaries of the five leaders approx. HUF 249.5 million Mandiner, 30 August 2026
Hungary’s control of corruption indicator −0.17 (2024) World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators

The last row gives the point of reference: according to the World Bank’s governance quality indicators Hungary’s control of corruption value was in negative territory in 2024, while government effectiveness (+0.42) and the rule of law (+0.35) were positive. The office is therefore meant to remedy not a general shortage of governmental capacity but a targeted, measured weakness — and this justifies requiring it to demonstrate its own performance in measured form as well.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the institutional guarantees of the office, the public tracking of recovered assets, the protection of the reporting channel;
  • Justice (background material) — the demarcation of the investigative, prosecutorial and judicial phases, and the fit of the new body into the existing procedural order;
  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — the selection and rotation system for the 150-strong staff, the framework of effectiveness measurement.

An important constitutional-law distinction: the NVVH’s president was elected by Parliament, not appointed by the Government — the president is therefore not legally subordinate to the prime minister, and the government cannot instruct her. The missing deputy presidents are likewise decided by the competent committee of Parliament and by the plenary. The president’s public statement that she accepts informal approaches from nobody is therefore not a conflict with the government but a statement of the existing legal position. Equally to be distinguished: an examination by the office is not the ordering of an investigation, an investigation is not an indictment, an indictment is not a judgment — and the presumption of innocence applies to everyone concerned at every stage.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Daniel Kaufmann: Governance Matters

The 1999 study by the three World Bank authors produced six aggregate indicators from more than 300 governance measures, and devoted much of its methodological chapter to showing that these indicators are imprecise, and that precisely for that reason their uncertainty has to be disclosed. The authors specifically emphasise that even the assignment of countries to broad categories is subject to a significant margin of error, and that a small difference between the point estimates of two countries cannot be interpreted as a statistically meaningful gap. The study nonetheless does not propose discarding the indicators:

“Despite the imprecision of these aggregate indicators, they are still very useful for several reasons.”

The key is the distinction: an estimate that is imprecise but accompanied by published uncertainty is a usable instrument; a figure that is imprecise but presented as precise is not. The NVVH’s band of 10,000–60,000 billion forints currently falls into the second category — not because the band is wide, but because there is no description alongside it of what makes it so wide. If the office applies Kaufmann’s yardstick to itself, the estimate strengthens its credibility; if it does not, the figure becomes a target for attack at every single citation.

📖 Source: Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Pablo Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters

6.4.2 Peter F. Drucker: The Effective Executive

Drucker’s central thesis from the point of view of organisations starting up is concentration. In his analysis there are always more important tasks than there is time for, so a leader’s most important capability is not versatility but the setting of priorities:

“Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results. […] They know that they have no choice but to do first things first — and second things not at all.”

This frame speaks directly to the NVVH at two points. First, on case selection: the president’s simile of “a net cast from a fishing boat” emphasises breadth of catch, whereas Drucker’s logic argues that the selection of the first cases is itself the most important resource decision — and the filtering carried out by the deputy president for investigations is defensible if its criteria are set down in writing, even if the cases themselves are not public. Second, on recruitment: Drucker regards personnel decisions as an organisation’s most irreversible decisions, because the effect of a bad selection stays with us for years. In the office’s case this is particularly sharp, because the 150 staff are being taken over from other bodies which are themselves short-staffed.

📖 Source: Peter F. Drucker: The Effective Executive

6.4.3 Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman: Spin Dictators

Guriev and Treisman’s book describes the pattern in which power does not break the laws but uses the instruments of the law selectively against political opponents. The authors specifically emphasise that this technique is not an eastern invention: the leaders of the American South were already acting against the actors of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s with non-political criminal proceedings — charges of tax evasion and perjury — long before today’s autocrats. The book’s other thesis relevant here is that formal institutions do not protect on their own:

“Formal institutions do not work by themselves. They often fail to constrain leaders.”

This is the direct argument for MIAK’s proposal. The act creating the NVVH, the parliamentary election and the president’s verbal commitment are together not sufficient guarantee — not because the current leadership’s intentions are in doubt, but because that is the nature of guarantees. What can be shown against the suspicion of selective initiation of proceedings is the procedural trail: the risk assessment methodology, the documented criteria of case selection and the contact log. Without these every decision of the office remains a matter of interpretation — and in political debate the interpretation always belongs to whoever is louder.

📖 Source: Sergei Guriev – Daniel Treisman: Spin Dictators

6.5 International comparison

MIAK’s A10 programme point builds on the model of Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB). Two elements of the Singaporean solution are relevant at the NVVH’s current stage. The first is the practice of an annual public report: every year the bureau publishes the number of reports received, the proportion of cases judged worth investigating and the proportion of cases leading to prosecution — that is, exactly the filtering ratio proposed by the fourth indicator in section 5.1. The second is the reversal of the burden of proof in cases of unexplained enrichment; this, however, requires a statutory basis, and is therefore not part of the present, quickly implementable package of proposals.

In European comparison the practice of the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau and of the Romanian asset recovery agency (ANABI) shows that the tracing and securing of assets normally precedes final judgments by years. This supports the president’s earlier, much-debated remark that final decisions can hardly be expected within six years — and it likewise justifies measuring the office’s performance not by the number of judgments but by the indicators of the phase falling within its own competence.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A10 — Independent Corruption Investigation Bureau (CPIB model)
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A5 — Whistleblower reporting system
  • A1 — Public money dashboard

Public administration and e-government

  • KI7 — Official selection and rotation system
  • KI8 — Drucker-style effectiveness measurement in public administration

Justice

  • I3 — Legislative impact assessment

Proposed new programme point: An obligation to publish the methodology of asset recovery estimates — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 31 August 2026 — topic 1):

  • [444.hu] Unger: Már kiválasztották az ügyeket, amivel elindul a Vagyonvisszaszerzési Hivatal — https://444.hu/2026/08/30/unger-mar-kivalasztottak-az-ugyeket-amivel-elindul-a-vagyonvisszaszerzesi-hivatal
  • [444.hu] Megválasztotta az Országgyűlés Unger Annát az NVVH vezetőjének — https://444.hu/2026/08/28/megvalasztotta-az-orszaggyules-unger-annat-az-nvvh-vezetojenek
  • [444.hu] Az ellenzék ÁVH-ra keresztelte a vagyonvisszaszerzési hivatalt, Magyar Péter szerint nincsenek szavak — https://444.hu/2026/08/28/az-ellenzek-avh-ra-keresztelte-a-vagyonvisszaszerzesi-hivatalt-magyar-peter-szerint-nincsenek-szavak
  • [Mandiner] Unger Anna 150 új munkatárssal építené fel a vagyonvisszaszerzési hivatalt — https://mandiner.hu/belfold/2026/08/unger-anna-150-uj-munkatarssal-epitene-fel-a-vagyonvisszaszerzesi-hivatalt
  • [Mandiner] Deák Dániel Unger Annáról: Jönnek a politikai kirakatperek? — https://mandiner.hu/belfold/2026/08/deak-daniel-unger-annarol-jonnek-a-politikai-kirakatperek
  • [ATV] Unger Anna: 10 és 60 ezer milliárd forint között van az eltűnt közvagyon — https://www.atv.hu/belfold/20260831/unger-anna-kozvagyon-nvvh/
  • [24.hu] Unger Anna: szeptember végén indulhat a nyomozás, már az is megvan, melyik üggyel — https://24.hu/belfold/2026/08/30/unger-anna-hazon-kivul-szeptember/
  • [Telex] Unger Anna: Engem ne hívogasson se Magyar Péter, se senki más — https://telex.hu/belfold/2026/08/30/unger-anna-nvvh-interju-rtl
  • [HVG] Nem mindig a legnépszerűbb döntés a legjobb döntés — https://hvg.hu/itthon/20260830_vagyonvisszaszerzesi-hivatal-magyar-peter-unger-anna-nvvh-elnokvalasztas-felelosseg-kozvetett-kepivelet
  • [HVG] Jancsics Dávid: Kérlelhetetlenül elszánt ember kell a vagyonvisszaszerzési hivatal élére — https://hvg.hu/360/20260828_jancsics-david-kerlelhetetlenul-elszant-ember-kell-a-nemzeti-vagyonvisszaszerzesi-hivatal-elere
  • [Portfolio] Elárulta Unger Anna: már megvan, melyik üggyel kezd a Nemzeti Vagyonvisszaszerzési és Vagyonvédelmi Hivatal — https://www.portfolio.hu/gazdasag/20260830/elarulta-unger-anna-mar-megvan-melyik-uggyel-kezd-a-nemzeti-vagyonvisszaszerzesi-es-vagyonvedelmi-hivatal-859258
  • [Magyar Nemzet] Magyar Péter: Unger Anna marad az NVVH vezetője és kész — https://magyarnemzet.hu/belfold/2026/08/unger-anna-marad-az-nvvh-vezetoje
  • [Népszava] Unger Anna szólt, hogy őt ne hívogassa se Magyar Péter, se más (title-level reference only) — https://nepszava.hu/

Knowledge base references (literature):

  • 📖 Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Pablo Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters
  • 📖 Peter F. Drucker: The Effective Executive
  • 📖 Sergei Guriev – Daniel Treisman: Spin Dictators

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A10, A6, A5, A1)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (programme points; programme point ID: KI7, KI8)
  • MIAK policy area: Justice (background material; programme point ID: I3)
  • MIAK press monitor, 31 August 2026 — topic 1, score: 95/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • World Bank — Worldwide Governance Indicators (Hungary, 2024)
  • Transparency International — Corruption Perceptions Index
  • Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) — annual reports

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