1
Pondering the most socially & politically powerful tropes and memes (social constructs – please see R Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene (you what?),” 1976) of the crazy-arsed 1880’s City of London we may stumble back some decades down a handy if proverbial Memory Lane to our secondary school studies..

2
So here lay the psycho-cultural (mental) foundation of the SA Law Society’s grandiose and socio-economically devastating Theory of Diminished Responsibility:

“In traditional literature a tragic hero is utterly vicious but in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Michael Henchard is not the..

3
“typical tragic man, he’s tragic hero.. impulsive, arrogant & honest, ambitious at the same time.. moral value supported his control over his wife, dau. & lover”

Fark

“..a kind of mysterious & unavoidable power, character, fate, deeply..”.

R Brown 1966.

Enough already.

4
The journalist’s particular ‘roman à thèse’ begins with a drunk dude selling his missus. His brand was in my opinion simple-mindedly socially engineered to counterpoint Cobbet’s epochal socio-economic critique of the brutal early industrial Peterloo Massacre era, Rural Rides, 80yrs before.

5
Roman à thèse
1) A NOVEL WITH A PURPOSE, Nicholas Wilson Pulteney Grammar School Adelaide re “Tess of the Durbervilles”,” a rape & impregnation by a toff story
2) ‘a “thesis novel,” a didactic novel that puts fwd an argument or proposes a solution to some problem of politics, morality, or philosophy @Wickipedia 3) A Roman à thèse (French: ‘thesis novel’) is a novel which is didactic or which expounds a theory. Scholar Susan Suleiman talked about “authoritarian fiction”

6

Reverse Diminished Responsibility: #Fascists demand cops “profile” Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander ppl (or if they behave nicely & do cultural activities & stuff give them bags of💰), vulnerable young women, ethnic minority group members, @Greens or ANYONE fighting corruption

John, and thanks to 1) all thoughtful souls in an anarchic morally-rudderless era of post-truth policy chaos, dysregulated extractive market economism and the directly resultant mental confusion and depressive illness in all age groups, especially young people regimented, harried, emotionally bludgeoned, dumbed down, medicalised, made ill and even killed off for Christ’s supposedly loving sake for the fiscal benefit of psycho-emotionally deranged racist. fascist, misogynist all-round misanthropes & self loathers, multi-millionaire quacks and surgeons

2) Christine Fourner @assoc1counsel Vancouver BC 🇨🇦

Footnote

Thinking of Victorian English law, here’s Julian Barnes’ valuable social document.. perhaps, or arguably, Edmund Burke’s ‘just prejudice’ meets reverse Diminished Responsibility.

‘Set at the turn of the 20th century, the story follows the separate but intersecting lives of two very different British men: a half-Indian solicitor and son of a vicar, George Edalji, and the world-famous author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Roughly one-third of the book traces the story of Edalji’s trial, conviction, and imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. About one-third of the book traces the story of Doyle’s life and his relationships with his first wife Louisa Hawkins and his platonic lover Jean Leckie. Roughly one-third of the book concerns Doyle’s attempt to clear the name of Edalji and uncover the true culprit of the crime. Julian Barnes called it “a contemporary novel set in the past” and the book does not aim to stick closely to the historical record at every point.’

I reflect on yet another slab and slough of ‘stocks & flows,’ social indicators and social determinants of #health – metrics, #Econometrics & taxation offsets for earnest #ABC & @SkyNews consumers – urgings to upper middle-income folk to ponder a social-conscience appeasing re-branding of Gross Domestic Product, without uttering a word about markets & overseas trade, budgetary goals & management or good governance let alone what humanity & ecology DEMAND that we IMMEDIATELY invest in and (by the same deliberative intelligent grown-up process) DEFUND.

Endless posture/ gesture/ announcement/ research-finding with strategically inserted tribal visceral clutch is what we are given by the broken neoliberal regime.

This IS @GretaThunberg blah-blah-blah about social – there is no environment in neoclassical discourse – outcomes from political class and academic siloised muppets.

Under the dead weight of neoclassical or so-called western civilisation’s cultural economic hegemony there’s only child development-retarding and adult depressive #mentalillness -inducing STORY: tales & narrative of exploration, adventure, discovery, military conquest, genocidal onslaught, heroism, villainy..

Villainy’s linguistic origin is with the feudal or mediaeval European robber-barons’ villein: serf, peasant, myrmidon, slave. Via sub-intelligent cognitively deranged old white men’s ‘reasoning’ villainy identifies THE POLITICAL LEFT – any political outsider who raises VOICE or even utters one word of complaint or sorrow over their violation, dispossession or oppression.

Here a climate war, there a culture war, a little farther away 10,000 are crushed and a $1m missile is deployed (again by those geriatric nutters to knock out a lost balloon) which invites new stories, from way back in 1785, no? How about China? What?? In the triumphalist post WWII Randite Hayekian Edward Bernays Lynton Crosby scheme of things we’ve rapidly progressed from 1) @Google searches to 2) #ArtificialIntelligence to 3) neofascist autocratic totalit-aryanism, and 4) Nutflux (kiwi pron.) will of course make a movie.

“The market is the market. You can’t argue with the market:” advisor to five USA Presidents John Kenneth Galbraith in “Unweaving the rainbow” (those rhetorician sub-editors again) a joint production of @Deakin-@RadioNational, Australia, on query-postcolonial impoverished countries’ #development.

Understanding & reforming economy is no more about replacing GDP with sociocultural & environmental outcomes econometrics than any so-called Green Left undergraduate cry for an END TO PROFIT or “degrowth,” let alone grass skirts AND AK47s. It’s about the UN #ESG goals: what we produce and how when where & why we do it, for life health longevity, the human love cooperation ethics and futures-vision – absolutely not any kind of monetary crypto-derivative values – this work requires for its success.. its real or human social value.. asking why of supply, demand and market price, recognising all three are human artificial constructs – concepts – driven by enterprisers and copy-writers not holy writ generated by invisible hand, mysterious spirit or wizard in the sky for goodness’ sake.. or in the plea of my newsletter ‘Community Economist’ at a moment when political thugs had erased my gardens, businesses, home and all family relationships for their fun and profit (though that last, personal, disaster did not hit me fully until I retirned from an exile in my own country to be greeted by these dogs thirteen years later):

To Price & Volume (Friedmanite neoliberalism’s ‘gold standard’ WE MUST ADD Quality & Honest Trading.

Or lose the lot. I did not know that then, in 1996. But as a global organic and regenerative agriculture pioneer and energy and weather systems writer I sure did by 2003 – and gave the world a carbon waste-pollution business-as-usual fit-for-human habitation use-by date, 2032, which I guess predictably made me even more the punitive target of political & public service crooks in Adelaide and their playthings the right-wing South Australian Police.

Two weeks ago we’re told Microsoft & Amazon are laying off thousands of postmodern post-fact post-truth vanity-narcissist-influencer Gordon Geckoe cult of individualism morally, culturally, spiritually & ecologically moribund consumer-society know-nothing flaneurs is it?

..life-wasters or in the neoclassical Engels mode social parasites basically stealing money from people’s bank accounts. Glove-puppets in Bill Gates’ World conducting concerted socially-engineered systematic assault on all humans with disposable income after living expenses or #savings – now also widely recognised as the billionaires’ assault on the middle class.

..I must renew* my Amazon Prime whoops I’ve never used it! As if.

..I must act on irregularities with my internet line whoops I don’t have one. As if.

..I must respond to earnest advices of another gangster-outfit calling itself the Telstra and Google Technical Services. Mother of Goodness.

..I must light candles, burn incense and slaughter fatted calves for all of those artificial consumer spender & voter programming algorithms we all so depend upon and cherish.. doing our own thinking for us. Intelligence. Seriously?

Enjoy this short note about the Davos haute bourgeois Thought Bomb, Klaus Schwab’s and so-o-o belatedly George Soros’s swansongs. Never forget to laugh at delusional nonsense of entrepreneurial spruiking. It’s NOT AT ALL unkind to sneer or even hit hard if these charlatans are making themselves the enemies of humanity. It’s essential. It’s exactly like proudly holding up your personal humanity licence for all to see in Elon’s public square.

..or the Milton Friedman orgiastic profiteering via regulatory exemption plan will plough slough and sludge itself literally to the death – yours and mine.

..as we all now realise our situation HAS NO CONNECT with the ‘rotten apples’ of @Nickelodeon, bad psychiatry, trash-culture cops & robbers or cowboys ‘n “injuns” – native North American people – but all of us.

John
Wednesday midday 08022023

So yeah, here it was the forerunner document to the above/ Friday evening in Southern Australia 20/1/2023 >>

Klaus Schwab’s 2-dimensional Analogue “Newtonian Mechanics”^^ Global Economy is Broken

On LinkedIn, Ian Kaplan, ‘bringing people together..’ with our thanks“$250,000 to attend Davos as a formal delegate at the annual World Economic Forum event??!! (link below)

“COP28 to be led by an oil company CEO??!!

“Is it any surprise when there are calls for an alternative framework to WEF, COP, etc. as the place to come together to discuss and take action on the climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and social inequality caused by the flawed system we live in?

“It’s time to boycott these frameworks and make them irrelevant.

“NOW.

“There’s no time to wait and see what happens.

“Wheels are already in motion for an alternative framework for bringing people together based on bioregions, negating the ability of industry lobbies to torpedo efforts for change, negating the setting of a core global agenda by established institutions opposed to changing the existing political economy, and negating their ability to determine who can and who can’t participate and be heard. The alternative framework includes a mechanism for encouraging and facilitating continuous action and progress, including measuring progress towards clear goals. ALL with a positive message!

“Looking for partners who have had enough of the BS. Feel free to reach out.”

^^ the Push Me Pull You Marx-Engels-Thatcher-& yes, evidently -Merkel – stemmie sighin’-tests’ (to use the Australian baby-talk) NO society/ don’t worry about that left-wing stuff, those groups, those activists/ how dare they disrupt our nineteenth century neoclassical theory and methodology? – oowhh/ yuck/ atheists too – the monetarist-wonderland dialectical ‘Rand-span’ Objectivist Zero Sum Game = the global ecological meltdown-threatening SUPPLY SIDE gang-bang

* “I’m calling to tell you your Amazon Prime is being renewed for $99.00. If you don’t want this prescription Dial 1” – THIS is not fiction. It first came to my notice in February last year when despite my skills, knowledge and emotional maturity this huge and sophisticated organised crime outfit from “Mountain View” stole $2,500 from my bank account and the bank, Bendigo Bank declined to reimburse me despite the money being initially deposited into an Australian bank account. And NOW, a year later, I’ve had four calls this week. The Australian minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neill claims to be angry about cyber-crime. I call bullshit.

JB

Introduction: The struggle to expose to public scrutiny the ecocidal and genocidal tyranny of Rand and Greenspan’s amoral depersonalising deracinating community-destroying Friedmanite anarcho-libertarian dysregulated neoliberalism – the end of government except as a mute, blind, near voiceless beyond tweets, media-conference grabs and other brief announcements or slogans, near unresponsive, socially- and environmentally-indifferent client of, and facilitator for, corporate accountants, lawyers, sub-intelligent advertising agencies, monumentally economically-illiterate frank lunatic fundamentalist Christian churches – the now irreversible and virtually irreparable assault on humanity in its entirety by plutocrats, organised crime cartels, Gateses, Bezoses, Musks, and Gautam Adanis – continues apace./ John

With thanks to Stephen Sackur @BBCworld..

Wirth Zsuzsanna 2023.01.19.

Have a good story? Contact us!

Documents prove that pro-government businessmen own a number of private equity funds with vast fortunes whose owners have so far remained secret, Direkt36 has learned, using data obtained from a state register.

Among other things, Direkt36 learned the following:

• It turns out that Lőrinc Mészáros, a friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and one of the wealthiest Hungarians, has interest in even more private equity funds than he had been associated with in the press.
• István Száraz, who is a friend of the central bank director’s son, Ádám Matolcsy, is the ultimate beneficial owner of almost 11 per cent of the Hungarian superbank Magyar Bankholding.
• Two private equity funds are owned by a Pécs real estate trader named Áron Hornung, who did business with billionaire investor Dániel Jellinek and has several links to Orbán’s son-in-law’s business partner, Endre Hamar. Hornung’s name has not hit the news before, although last year he took out dividends of HUF 13.5 billion from just one of his companies.
• The private equity fund that won the Hungarian motorway concession for 35 years – in a consortium with six other private equity funds – belongs to billionaire László Szíjj, a business associate of Lőrinc Mészáros.

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The special rules applying for private equity funds offer investors the possibility to hide huge fortunes. While in the case of traditional companies anyone can obtain official information about their ownership and finances with a few minutes of online research, private equity funds are different.

It is a form of investment in which a closed circle of investors can put their money and grow their wealth without being subject to company disclosure rules. The money is held by a fund manager company on behalf of the investors. The ownership of the fund manager is public, but it is not possible to find out whose money is in the private equity fund they manage.

Private equity funds exist in many countries around the world, primarily for investment purposes. In Hungary, however, a few years ago, the business elite close to the government saw the potential of their secrecy and started using them like offshore companies are used elsewhere: to increase their wealth in complete secrecy.

As a result, private equity funds have multiplied in Hungary, and hundreds of billions of HUF worth of wealth have been transferred to them. A series of fund managers linked to billionaires close to the government have built ever larger portfolios. Money has been invested in almost every sector of the economy. Private equity funds own, for example, the 35-year-old Hungarian motorway concession, hotel chains, dozens of Budapest’s luxurious palaces, restaurants, banks, industrial companies, waste treatment plants and many others. Valuable state-owned properties and companies have also been transferred to private equity funds, ultimately enriching the wealth of unknown individuals. Last year, business site G7 estimated that the total anonymity scheme was so widespread among large investors that by 2021, 3.5 percent of all Hungarian companies’ profits were realized in private equity funds.

Direkt36 has now found the ultimate beneficial owners of about a fifth of the operating private equity funds, 26 in total, in a state database managed by the tax authority NAV. This is a register of beneficial ownership, created in response to an EU requirement and currently available to anyone for a small fee.

It is not clear whether the ultimate beneficial owners of private equity funds should be included in the register maintained by the NAV. There are conflicting laws and different definitions of who should be considered the ultimate beneficial owner.

When Direkt36 asked NAV for guidance on this, they replied that we should direct our questions to the Prime Minister’s Office. They did not elaborate on what the government apparatus had to do with the issue of private equity funds, which in principle belongs entirely to the business world. The Cabinet Office, however, responded to our inquiry by saying that “we strongly refute even the suggestion that the Prime Minister’s Office has any jurisdiction over the ownership registry of Hungarian private equity funds”.

We asked for reactions to our article from all relevant fund managers and beneficial owners but received no response from most of them. Two fund managers – Quartz and Opus Global – replied that they could not disclose information about owners and investments. Among other things, Áron Hornung wrote that we were inaccurate about him, but he declined to specify which of our claims he disputed. Közép-Európai Kockázati és Magán Tőkealapkezelő Zrt., which according to the NAV database manages Hornung’s funds, said that the database contained incorrect data due to a bank administrative error, but did not specify who the real owners of the funds were. (Update: After the publication of our article, 4iG’s head of communications indicated that two private equity funds were wrongly linked to Lőrinc Mészáros in the database – presumably also due to a bank administrative error – and that they are in fact owned by Gellért Jászai, the head of 4iG.)

Main findings

According to Direkt36’s research, out of the total of 119 private equity funds registered by the Hungarian National Bank, 37 reported their beneficial owners to NAV’s system, but 11 of these only identified persons who, as managers of the fund, can make decisions about the investment of the fund’s money, but do not have a stake. The extent of their interest varies between 39 and 100 per cent.

Of those with an interest, 17 private equity funds belong to clearly pro-government owners, but a further five are also closely linked to pro-government business circles. Among them are well-known billionaires such as István Száraz, László Szíjj, Lőrinc Mészáros, Zsolt Hernádi and Gellért Jászai. Lőrinc Mészáros is the most prominent: he has a 100 per cent stake in nine private equity funds, and another two belong to his corporate lawyer, József Tamás Kertész.

These are what we found out about the funds:

1. Lőrinc Mészáros’ private equity funds are in fact even more extensive than the collections published in the press so far have shown. The Manhattan and Repro I private equity funds have so far been linked to Gellért Jászai because he owns the fund management company, but the actual ownership records show that the 100 per cent ultimate beneficial owner is Lőrinc Mészáros. At present, one property in Normafa is linked to Repro I, and Manhattan owns 1.6 percent of the shares in the IT giant 4iG, which is managed by Gellért Jászai. (Update: After the publication of our article, the communications manager of 4iG amended that the two private equity funds have actually been owned by Jászai Gellért for years, and the NAV records contain outdated data. The banks managing the accounts are responsible for updating the data and identifying the actual owners.)
2. Private equity funds called Eirene and Metis, which own almost 15 percent of the shares of Magyar Bankholding, the Hungarian superbank to be established this year, were previously known to be linked to Lőrinc Mészáros through the fund manager Opus Global, now the actual ownership records officially indicate too, that the shares actually belong to Viktor Orbán’s friend.
3. It has also become certain that the giant private equity fund Konzum PE’s ultimate beneficial owner is Lőrinc Mészáros. The Hungarian press, for example Átlátszó and Válasz Online, has been following in detail the investments of the fund, which is the largest owner of Opus Global Plc, the flagship of the Mészáros business empire. In addition, it owns several large food companies and a mineral water company, the Hunguest Hotels hotel chain and the Balatontourist camping network, as well as several lavish Andrássy Avenue properties in Budapest.
4. According to the beneficial ownership registry, Mészáros also owns the private equity funds Global Alfa, Status Next, Status Food and Status Property. These include, among others, interests in the turkey processing company Gallicoop, a PET recycling plant in Karcag, the former officers’ casino palace near Ferenciek Square in Budapest, which used to be the headquarters of MKB Bank, and the transformer manufacturer Ganz Ltd. The latter was partially acquired by the private equity fund Prime Property early last year. Along with Prime Finance, this private equity fund is not owned 100 percent by Lőrinc Mészáros, but by one of his confidants, the lawyer József Tamás Kertész, who often handles the legal affairs of his companies. Kertész also works for 4iG and is the founder of the government-owned media foundation KESMA.
5. István Száraz, who is a friend of Ádám Matolcsy, the son of the Hungarian National Bank’s president, ultimately owns 10.8 per cent of the shares in the new superbank, Magyar Bankholding, which will be created later this year. This was not clear until now, only that the ultimate beneficial owner of the shares is Uncia private equity fund (indirectly through two Luxembourg companies, both called Blue Robin, and two other Hungarian companies). Now, the beneficial ownership records show that this fund is 100 per cent owned by István Száraz.
6. István Száraz appears to be the beneficial owner of another private equity fund, too. According to the register, he has a 100 per cent in Felis private equity fund. The fund is managed by Quartz Fund Management. Quartz, formerly owned by Mr. Száraz and now owned by a private equity fund, manages a range of investment funds and thus holds billions of HUF in assets. Válasz Online has previously found Felis behind a number of companies, including the premium deli chain Culinaris, the Black Swan cocktail bar in the Pest party district and the Pine Weekendhouse in Balatonkenese. The latter was backed by state tourism funds. Felis Private Equity Fund used to be the owner of the Lánchíd 19 Design Hotel near Várkert Bazár. The same is the case with one of the most exclusive plots in the Buda Castle District at Ostrom Street. It also owns a large office in Vörösmarty Square.
7. A name not previously reported in the press emerges as the 92 and 93 percent owner of the private equity funds Közép-Európai I and Közép-Európai II, which formerly owned the Dürer Garden property. These funds can also be linked to István Tiborcz’s business partner and friend Bálint Szécsényi, as he runs the company managing them. However, the actual owner listed in the ownership register is not Bálint Szécsényi, but a certain Áron Hornung, who is linked to István Tiborcz’s business circle. Hornung is from the Southern Hungarian town Pécs and works there as a real estate agent and office manager of the Duna House real estate agency. In the meantime, however, he also owns or has owned billions of HUF in assets through his companies. For example, he founded a company called PLZ-Asset, which bought Pécs Plaza, then in 2020 was bought by a real estate fund of one of the country’s richest men, real estate investor Daniel Jellinek. The same happened to PLZ Office, a company that owns an office building in Pécs. It was also set up by Hornung and has since been acquired by Jellinek. Fagales Zrt., a real estate management company founded in 2017, of which Hornung is both the CEO and sole shareholder, has brought Hornung huge profits, and last year had a net profit of nearly HUF 10 billion. Hornung has approved a dividend payment of 13.5 billion forints to himself, according to public company documents. Hornung’s extraordinary business success went unnoticed in the press despite the fact that Fagales Zrt. was among the top 500 companies for 2022 as the most profitable company in Baranya County. Hornung also knows Endre Hamar, a former schoolmate and business partner of István Tiborcz in Pécs. Hamar and Hornung are not only Facebook friends, but in photos uploaded to Facebook in 2010 they are sitting at the same table in a club. (Közép-Európai Kockázati és Magán Tőkealapkezelő Zrt., which manages the funds, sent a statement shortly before the publication of this article stating that Hornung is not the real owner of the private equity fund, but that there was only an administrative error at the bank, but still did not say who the real owner was, citing legal reasons. When contacted, Áron Hornung replied that he and his family had been involved in real estate investment for nearly 20 years and called our claims untrue and inaccurate on several points. However, he declined to specify exactly which allegations he disputed. István Tiborcz’s communications manager promised to answer our questions later, and Endre Hamar’s law firm declined to respond. Dániel Jellinek told Direkt36 that to his knowledge, Áron Hornung is a well-known real estate owner in Baranya County, who managed to turn Pécs Plaza into a well-managed project, which is why Jellinek’s Indotek Group decided to buy the shopping centre from him.)
8. Zoltán Szabadics, an entrepreneur from Zala County, is the 100 per cent beneficial owner of the Közép-Európai VI private equity fund, according to the NAV registry. Szabadics’s father, József Szabadics, founded the family’s construction group, and Zoltán holds senior positions in several of the group’s companies. He is also the chairman of the board of directors of BAHART, a Balaton shipping company belonging to the state’s Tourism Agency, and has also received a medal from former President János Áder. One of his companies received a HUF 1.7 billion grant from the state Kisfaludy programme. The Közép-Európai Kockázati és Magán Tőkealapkezelő Zrt., which manages the fund, stated shortly before the publication of our article that Szabadics was not the real owner of the private equity fund, and that there had been an administrative error in the bank mixing up the data, but still did not say who the real owner was, citing legal reasons.
9. Zsolt Hernádi, CEO of Hungarian oil company Mol, is not only the manager of the Solva private equity fund through a company, but is also a 100 per cent owner, the beneficial ownership register shows. The fund has previously bought a company and two hotels in the town of Esztergom.
10. László Szíjj, Lőrinc Mészáros’s billionaire business partner, also appears in the beneficial ownership database as the owner of a private equity fund called Themis. This means the fund is not only managed by his company, but the billionaire is also the beneficial owner. This fund (in consortium with seven other private equity funds) won the procurement process offering the right to operate Hungarian motorways for 35 years.

Below you can see the ultimate beneficial owners, who are businessmen close to the government or persons connected to them:

Name of private equity fund	Beneficial owner(s)	Percentage of interest
EIRENE	Mészáros Lőrinc	78
EKHO	Mészáros Lőrinc	100
Felis	Száraz István Péter	100
Global Alfa	Mészáros Lőrinc	100
iG TECH	Jászai Gellért Zoltán	100
Konzum PE	Mészáros Lőrinc	100
Közép-Európai I.	Hornung Áron	93
Közép-Európai II.	Hornung Áron	92
KÖZÉP-EURÓPAI VI.	Szabadics Zoltán	100
Manhattan	Mészáros Lőrinc*	100
METIS	Mészáros Lőrinc	100
PRIME FINANCE	Dr. Kertész József Tamás	100
PRIME PROPERTY	Dr. Kertész József Tamás	100
REPRO I.	Mészáros Lőrinc*	100
Solva	Hernádi Zsolt Tamás	80
STATUS FOOD	Mészáros Lőrinc	100
STATUS NEXT	Mészáros Lőrinc	100
STATUS PROPERTY	Mészáros Lőrinc	100
THEMIS	Szíjj László	100
UNCIA	Száraz István Péter	100

(For the other identified beneficial owners, no clear public or political affiliation was found, so we decided not to disclose their names.)

(After publication, Gellért Jászai’s 4iG has said, these private equity funds currently belong to Gellért Jászai.)

How come private equity funds appear in the beneficial ownership registry?

It is probably because the system was set up barely a year and a half ago, and because of the complexity of the regulations, that made it possible that some of the beneficial owners of private equity funds have appeared in the NAV registry.

The 2021 law on the establishment of a de facto register of beneficial owners does not name private equity funds, so they are not specifically covered by the regulation, which means they can continue to keep secret who their main investors are. However, they do have bank accounts and another law, the Anti-Money Laundering Act, requires banks that maintain accounts to keep records of the beneficial owners of legal entities. Thus, the beneficial owner of some of the private equity funds may appear in the NAV register even though they should not be there officially.

As the law and the database are new and the regulation is complicated, banks appear to have chosen different solutions of declaring who owns the funds and who should be considered the beneficial owner. A guide on how to determine the beneficial owner in complex cases – “complex ownership structures” – is available on the Hungarian National Bank’s website. And while it is detailed and covers a lot of subjects from identifying foremen to dealing with offshore companies, it does not specifically address the case of private equity funds.

But in their case, it is not at all clear who the beneficial owner should be: the person holding the majority of the shares (at least 25 per cent according to the law)? Or the manager of the management company? In the case of private equity funds, the people who put their money into the fund cannot formally decide how it is invested, because this is decided by the management of the company managing the private equity fund. However, these managers do not have a share in the fund, so profit always goes to the investors.

In the Hungarian practice however, personal links between the fund manager and the owners of the fund are presumably very common. This is also shown by documents downloaded by Direkt36, which basically show that people with shares in private equity funds also have influence on the fund management companies, or even own them outright.

The EU created it, the Curia ruled against it

As part of the fight against money laundering, the European Union already instructed Member States in 2015 to start keeping a central register of beneficial owners of companies and other legal entities registered in their territory. Such a database is a dream of investigative journalists and anti-corruption organizations, as it makes it harder for owners hiding behind offshore companies to hide their assets. However, investors seeking to increase their wealth in secret were clearly not happy about this.

Member States were reluctant, with only a few of them having created the database by the 2017 deadline. In the meantime, partly in response to the scandal induced by the publication of the Panama Papers stories, which exposed a series of offshore secrets, the EU has moved even further towards transparency, and a subsequent 2018 directive required that the identity of beneficial owners be made public. This means that not only public authorities but also ordinary citizens have the right to know the identity of the beneficial owners.

The actual ownership registers were then established in this spirit across Europe. Hungary was one of the last in 2021. The register is managed by the tax authority, and banks are required to report the data to the system monthly. The banks are entrusted with this task because they manage the accounts of companies, subsidiaries, law firms, pension funds and a range of other legal entities. At the opening of the account and later, in the event of a change of details, banks are obliged to ask their customers for a declaration of the identity of the beneficial owner, which they forward to the NAV register. In principle, mainly authorities have access to the database, but under EU rules, anyone can know the identity of the beneficial owner by paying HUF 1 500 (approx. 4 euros) per account.

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However, the Hungarian system, which came into operation in 2021, may not be with us for much longer. The EU has seen a series of lawsuits against the disclosure of data, and at the end of November last year, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Curia, ruled that it is not okay for anyone to know the identity of the actual owners.

Only a few hours after the ruling, Luxembourg switched off its own registry, and the Netherlands followed suit the next day. In the following days, Austria, Belgium, Malta and Germany also ended open access. The Hungarian system is still available.

Dániel Szőke contributed to this article.

MAGÁNTŐKEALAPTÉNYLEGES TULAJDONOS

DIREKT36

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• How Viktor Orbán decided to arm Hungary
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..and Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service proudly boasted through the voice of its co-premier newsreader as late as October 2022 that it did (facts) “not opinion.”

‘Justice denied: Indigenous women and children still face a legal system stacked against them’

With our thanks to the #ABC.. and to Dr McGlade

I must also explain that this article by Dr McGlade was subject to deliberate management-ordered restriction and suppression of airing. I’m a human rights advocate who spent two decades working for our old people and the kids. I am therefore an avid reader of anything that might help us to expunge white racism, feudal British overlordship and police & redneck neonazi killings, but I did not see this outing until today, searching HMcG. John Blundell SA

By Hannah McGlade

Posted Thu 22 Sep 2016 at 9:43amThursday 22 Sep 2016 at 9:43am

At a time when media attention is quite rightly focused on ending family violence, Aboriginal women and girls still face unacceptably high levels of assault, homicide and intimidation. 

Research shows that Aboriginal mothers in Western Australia are 17.5 times more likely to die from homicide than a non-Aboriginal mother. 

Aboriginal mothers are also at increased risk of suicide related to factors including intimate partner violence and sexual abuse. 

There is considerable evidence establishing the extent and nature of the violence experienced by Aboriginal women. 

A historic resolution passed at the last session of the UN’s Human Rights Council condemns violence against Indigenous women. 

It reiterates the duty of states to exercise due diligence to provide protection to Indigenous women and girls, including by all appropriate means of a legal, political, administrative and social nature to provide access to justice. 

But a major issue faced by Aboriginal women is the lack of responsiveness by the Australian justice system. 

Australia has made a commitment to combatting violence against women, including Indigenous women, through a National Plan of Action. 

The National Plan includes provisions aimed at strengthening Indigenous communities. It includes strategies to foster the leadership of Indigenous women in community and wider society, building community capacity and improving access to support services.

The plan also refers to Indigenous women under strategies aimed at ensuring justice responses are effective and perpetrators are held accountable. 

However, there is little mention of Indigenous women and the difficulties faced in accessing justice, other than the Family Violence Prevention Legal Service which does its utmost to support women and which urges law reforms to ensure access to justice.

In 1994 the Australian Law Reform Commission Inquiry ‘Equality before the law’ reported that:

“Of all the identifiable groups of women whose concerns have been presented to the Commission, Aboriginal … women are least well served by the legal system…. The reality experienced by most Indigenous women is that the law provides them with little or no protection. In particular, few men who commit violent assaults against indigenous women are made accountable for these non-Indigenous or Indigenous crimes.”

This finding remains highly relevant today, more than 20 years after this historic inquiry. 

These women’s stories are just a few that have caused considerable concern of bias in the administration of justice:

Andrea Pickett

Andrea Pickett was 39 years old when she was murdered by her ex-partner Kenneth in 2009. 

Recently released from prison for acts of violence against her, Kenneth murdered Andrea as she tried to flee with her infant. Andrea feared for her safety and that of her 13 children and she had done her utmost to seek protection from the justice system. 

Having heard the ways in which the system had failed Andrea, I assisted her family to have her death examined by the Coroner. This in itself was a difficult task as the deaths of Indigenous women are not routinely examined by the Coroner. 

The Coroner who later investigated Andrea’s death noted that she had made many complaints to the police that were simply written off without investigation. The few responses that occurred were minimal and ineffective. She also sought help from the parole board and support agencies who failed to provide protection. 

The police advised the Coroner they had conducted their own investigation into her death and found numerous failures on part of investigating officers. 

They said that they now implemented a system wide policy change to address victim safety. The coroner accepted this submission and made no recommendations aimed at police. 

While important systemic reforms were introduced as a result of the inquest, Indigenous women’s experience of discrimination in accessing justice was not identified or addressed. 

Ms Dhu

The case of a young Aboriginal woman, known for cultural reasons as Ms Dhu, showed similar patterns of negative police conduct in relation to Indigenous women’s victimisation. 

Ms Dhu was arrested by police and taken into police custody on August 2, 2014. 

She was a victim of domestic violence and in urgent need of medical help. 

The police were not interested in and did not investigate her evidence of an assault. They also – fatally – did not believe her when she told them she was injured and in need of help.

Ms Dhu was pronounced dead on August 4, 2014 – two days after being taken into custody. The cause of her death in police custody was medical conditions arising from injuries previously inflicted on her as a victim of domestic violence. 

I observed the Coroner’s court as it showed disturbing CCTV footage of young Ms Dhu in the cells. We saw her crying and moaning in pain, calling out for help from police officers who ignored her cries. Dying, she was cuffed and dragged through the lockup as one might ‘drag a dead kangaroo’ an Aboriginal elder said. 

While the officers took Ms Dhu to hospital, they told medical staff that Ms Dhu was “faking it”. The medical staff did not undertake basic procedures, such as a temperature or X-rays, and she did not receive treatment that could have saved her. 

The police involved in Ms Dhu’s shocking death were disciplined by way of reprimand, but none were dismissed and most have now been promoted. 

To this day no one has been charged in relation to her death.

Observing the Coroner’s court I saw little attention paid to Ms Dhu as an Aboriginal victim of domestic violence. There was no acknowledgement of Aboriginal partner violence, the interplay of race and gender and the inhumane treatment she received. 

Lynette Daley

I could list many more cases including that of Lynette Daley, mother of seven, who died in 2011 following violent sexual acts on her by non-Aboriginal men. 

While the investigating police officers and the state Coroner recommended that charges be laid against those men, the Crown prosecutors did not accept their recommendation and declined to lay any charges at all. 

According to her family, “They didn’t care about her. You know, it was just another Indigenous girl, we’ll sweep it under the carpet.” 

This year, almost five years after Lynette’s death, the Crown reversed its decision in the face of considerable media (including a Four Corners report) and a public campaign for justice in the victim’s name. 

Indigenous Professor Marcia Langton, in considering such cases, has recently asked:

“Is our legal system tolerating and even encouraging the femicide of Indigenous women? I think it is,” she concluded. 

Article 22 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides Indigenous women with the right to access justice and protection against violence. 

These cases, and the deaths of many Aboriginal women and mothers, highlight the need for greater commitment to ensuring equality before the law for Indigenous women and further development of strategy and policy to increase Indigenous women’s access to justice:

• Talk more with Indigenous women to ensure the justice system responds to the race, gender and sometimes disability issues that they face;
• measures to ensure the full participation of Indigenous women in the administration of justice, including training and employment as police, lawyers, prosecutors, magistrates, judges and coroners;
• human rights programs aimed at law enforcement and judiciary.

We urgently require the development of these domestic human rights responses that seek to acknowledge and respond to the multilayered experiences of Aboriginal women in accessing justice and seeking protection from violence. 

Hannah McGlade is a human rights lawyer, writer and social justice activist. This is an edited version of remarks she made as part of a panel discussion on Indigenous women and violence at the 33rd session of the UN Human Rights Council