At the time the reports surfaced, Várhelyi told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that he was “not aware” of the alleged Hungarian efforts, a denial he repeated on Monday.
“I had no knowledge of this claim which was made in the press,” he told MEPs in response to a question from Greens lawmaker Daniel Freund.
Freund had asked the commissioner if he had known of any of the activities supposedly run out of the Hungarian permanent representation to the EU, which he worked at from 2011 and ran from 2015.
Hungarian officials working in the EU institutions at the time described the network to POLITICO as an open secret in the Belgian capital.
Following the media reports, Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar — who also worked at the Hungarian permanent representation under Várhelyi — accused him of withholding information about his time as an ambassador.
“In my opinion, Olivér Várhelyi, the current EU Commissioner and former EU Ambassador (and my former boss), did not reveal the whole truth when he denied this during the official investigation the other day,” Magyar wrote in a Facebook post.
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