Over 70 pc of Russian applicants for Hungarian citizenship rejected

Budapest, September 18 (MTI) – Around 2,800 Russians applied for Hungarian citizenship in recent years and over 70 percent of them were rejected, a senior official at the Prime Minister’s Office said on Thursday.

Deputy state secretary for Hungarian communities abroad Tamas Wetzel told public Kossuth radio that every application for citizenship is assessed in the same manner. The applicant is expected to prove with documents that he or she had Hungarian ancestors and Hungarian language skills are also strictly checked, he added.

News portal Index recently reported that a mafia has developed specialising in dual citizenship and even “according to careful estimates” tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Russians and Serbs received Hungarian citizenship based on gorged documents. Several Ukrainian gangs and Hungarian legal firms are specialised on this business, the report stated.

Wetzel told MTI on Tuesday that his office would take legal action against the site that published the report.

He told Kossuth radio that the article’s claims were nonsense and it would be possible to actually prove that “tens of thousands” cannot be true. The article included several distortions and there must have been a hidden agenda behind publishing it, he added.

Wetzel said there have been attempts to acquire citizenship unlawfully but police and the state security authorities have been closely monitoring the procedures.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters