On June 6, 2021, shortly before noon, György Schadl was called on the phone. On the other end of the line was a lecturer at the National Public Service University. First, the conversation was about private matters for nearly four minutes, and then the president of the executive faculty at the time changed the subject.
He started talking about the fact that a “dear friend”, the secretary of the Borsod County Municipality, Beáta Lupkovics, will have an exam the next day, but she is “very afraid” of this exam. Schadl also said that he told Lupkovics: he is a very good friend of the instructor.
From this, the instructor immediately understood what the president of the executive faculty wanted. He reassured me that there will be a good committee for the exam, they will listen, there will be no problem, please reassure this good friend.
Based on this, György Schadl interceded or tried to intercede so that his dear friend, Beáta Lupkovics, who was still working as a county clerk at the time, would do well in her exam, which she was very afraid of.
Lupkovics only became an independent court bailiff in Miskolc in May 2022 after his clerkship, but a year later, in the spring of 2023, he replaced György Schadl, who had been under arrest for a year and a half at the time, as the head of the bailiff. He has been the faculty president ever since.
A week before his election, a letter was circulated in which executive Csaba Petris, an old confidant of Schadl, in order to show their unity and to “maintain their operation without disturbance”, asked the members of the faculty to appoint five specific candidates (Beáta Lupkovics, Szabolcs Kovássy, Gábor Papp, István Gergely Ódor and Zoárd Kósa) cast their votes. In the letter, Petris added a short comment to each candidate. He wrote about Lupkovics: “a new colleague who has leadership ambitions and enjoys the trust of the minister”. Lupkovics was a classmate of the former Minister of Justice, Judit Varga, at the Faculty of Law of the University of Miskolc. The letter was later called a forgery by both the faculty and the Ministry of Justice.
Now, on Monday, Lupkovics also appeared in the parliament: László Toroczkai mentioned that Lupkovics was a classmate of Judit Varga at the university, and that his name appears in one of the audio recordings of the documents of the Schadl-Völner case. According to the president of Mi Hazánk, the main problem here is that Schadl “talks about his man Beáta Lupkovics and asks for protection and benefits for her”. Viktor Orbán reacted to this by saying that it is not a sensible proposal that someone should not hold a position just because he was a university classmate of a minister, and the Schadl-Völner case is going on trial, and this shows that their government under such matters have consequences. The Prime Minister did not respond to the mention of the audio recording.
According to the investigation materials, Schadl’s attempt to intervene may indeed indicate that Beáta Lupkovics is a person close to him. Schadl had previously been found to be able to arrange successful university exams for acquaintances, such as Antal Rogán’s chief of staff and a relative of Pál Völner. Nagy passed an exam without even being there, and even in the Neptun system, Schadl was able to apply for the exam through his connections.
He just beckoned Schadl to calm down
We also contacted György Schadl himself to find out if he really wanted to arrange Lupkovics’ exam in this way, and if so, why he interfered in his behalf. He answered so much that we should consider his previous message as the guiding principle, which sounded like this: if his statement “will be relevant, he will earn”.
We then contacted the other actor in the intercepted audio recording, a lecturer at the National Public Service University. He wrote that he has known György Schadl since university, they also started teaching at the same time, and then sometimes called each other on the phone, “for polite conversations”. But he claims that he never helped Schadl, not even in the case of Lupkovics’ thesis defense. According to him, it can be seen from the interception protocol that “in short, but factually, I refrained from any further suggestions. In addition, my words at that time were also justified by the fact that, knowing the students’ theses, and the written professional opinions on the theses that had already been prepared weeks before – 2-2 per thesis, completely independent of me personally, all of them were well-structured and thorough work, which is why I told my interlocutor to calm down.”
According to the lecturer, the outcome of the thesis defense is not decided by him anyway, but by a review committee, which was assembled weeks before – and the mentioned conversation between him and Schadl took place the day before the defense. “Also on the day of the aforementioned defense, such an independent committee of 6 – well above the usual 3-person final exam committee at universities – made a decision, thus ensuring the objectivity, clarity and regularity of the results obtained during the evaluation,” he wrote. According to the instructor, it has nothing to do with the Schadl-Völner case anyway, because it is not part of any criminal proceedings.
We also contacted the National Public Service University. We were wondering if they were aware of this case and, if so, whether they had investigated or planned to investigate the matter. The rector of the university first wrote, “he didn’t know about it, he’s looking into it”, then they applied. Finally, through the press department, we received the answer that “based on the available information, an ethical investigation was not initiated at the university”, and they were not contacted by investigators or other authorities in the matter.
We also looked for Beáta Lupkovics, but we did not receive an answer from her.
It was removed from the investigative material of the Schadl-Völner case
It is interesting that, like the Tóni, Barbara and Ádám case, this Lupkovics detail was also extracted from the investigative material of the Schadl–Völner case.
There are two versions of this: there was the first version, which was roughly 1,700 pages long. This is dated December 14, 2021, that is, it was compiled shortly after György Schadl was caught and Pál Völnert was suspected. At the beginning of 2023, a later, much more detailed version of the investigative material reached several editorial offices, including Telex. This is an 11,000-page document, which was dated September 9, 2022, which means that it presents a much later state of the investigation in much more detail.
The ominous conversation between György Schadl and the lecturer of the National Public Service University is included in the wiretap protocol made public from the first version of the investigative material. This conversation is no longer included in the later, longer version. So we asked the Central Investigative General Prosecutor’s Office why the detail about Beáta Lupkovics was omitted from the later version.
They wrote that the audio recording was examined and evaluated in the investigation, but “no other data emerged during the procedure that would have been suitable for establishing any crime (for example, abuse of office, corruption crime) as well as a simple suspicion”. Therefore, no one was interrogated as a suspect, and no charges were brought, so the audio recording “could no longer form part of the investigative files.” They also added that “within the framework of the rule of law, the prosecutor’s office cannot act during criminal proceedings – for example, regarding the examination and operation of a higher education institution – for behavior that is not considered a crime, regardless of its moral and ethical assessment”.
The prosecutor’s office thus admitted that the part about Beata Lupkovics was indeed removed from the second version of the investigative material. But according to them, rigging an exam is not considered a corruption crime anyway, even if it may be ethically reprehensible.
The police are investigating
In April 2023, however, it was revealed that the police were investigating whether György Schadl could have helped acquaintances pass university exams. At the time, they said that the case was still under investigation, and no one was even questioned as a witness. According to this, the prosecutor’s office also handed over this thread to the police.
We have now sent more questions to the National Police Headquarters. We asked whether the investigation is still ongoing, if so, with what suspicions and against whom, whether witnesses have been questioned in the past year, and if the investigation has already been closed, whether charges have been brought, and if so, against whom.
They replied that the police are investigating the case on suspicion of abuse of office, but so far no one has been questioned as a suspect. On the other hand, they do not provide more information about an ongoing case.