Corrupt employer, reporting mechanisms?

While I do not feel competent in this specific case, I feel it is useful to share my experience on trying to report on strange use of grant money to the NFÜ (government agency distributing and overseeing many grants, here being used to destroy our local environment). A letter by our civil society was answered by NFÜ with 'well, everything is OK'.
A letter written by a lawyer costed money but seems to pay off.
But you need to get information on 'usual praxis' is as it may differ from theory, needless to say.
I guess you are aware that actually suing someone may easily take years. On the bright side, the judicial system has the reputation of being incompetent and slow but not really corrupt, I'd even go so far as say that I cannot recall any corruption scandal in this respect.
Some links, of course only in Hungarian:
http://www.cvcentrum.hu/karrierkozpont-kerdesekhttp://www.jogiforum.hu/http://munkahelyiterror.blog.hu/tags/r: … Dts%C3%A9g

There is an anonym method to report crime called "phone witness".
http://www.police.hu/megelozes/telefontanu

I don't know if they are know english or not...

06-80-555-111 this is a toll free number.

Andras

If you have employment related problem find a lawyer. Courts in hungary are on the employee side in most cases.

Very sorry to hear that!
First of all, do know that such things even happen to locals, quite frequently.
Most offenses go unreported, because most employment contracts include something fraudulent or incriminating for the employee as well: part of the wage paid under the table, health insurance benefits fraud, etc.
At other times, bonuses and wages are delayed and the employee keeps quiet in fear of losing the money he is owed.
And with the unemployment rate so high, most people feel lucky to have a job even while abused, they fear it might take prohibitively long to find another one (especially if they have a bad reputation among employers)

So if in your situation you know you did nothing wrong, everything was legal from your side, you already incurred the financial losses and you are sure you are not risking losing your residency or whatever status by getting in a labor dispute, you decide to go through with it and get a favorable judgment, that's still not money in the bank: Depending on the size of your employer and the amount owed/awarded, there is still a possibility for your employer to fake bankruptcy, pay you nothing and continue the next day where he left off with the serial number in the company name incremented by one.

You don't give too many details, so I can't be sure, but it looks like you don't have much to lose by contacting the authorities:

Labor Office (they do inspections on work safety and labor law compliance)
http://www.ommf.gov.hu/index.html?akt_menu=206

Tax authority (all-powerful, above the law in many ways. I'm sure you witnessed tax evasion)
http://nav.gov.hu/nav/bunugy/elerhetose … toseg.html

Very popular site to publicly name and shame offenders, often featured on the largest news site index.hu:
http://munkahelyiterror.blog.hu/


Let us know how we can help, PM me if it's too sensitive to just post publicly.