From the moment Safarov was sentenced in Budapest, there were repeated demarches by the Azerbaijani government to convince the Hungarian authorities to hand the man over, member of the European Parliament Frank Engel said in an interview with Budapest Beacon.

The Azerbaijani side promised that he would serve out the sentence that was pronounced by the Hungarian court.

“The difference, of course, is that neither Gyurcsány nor Bajnai [former Hungarian PMs – ed.] believed these obviously false promises,” Engel said.

“Then comes Orbán and – miraculously – after an official state visit to Azerbaijan, Safarov is back home a few weeks later. Nobody can tell me this had nothing to do with money. There would be no reason why the champion of Christianity in Europe, Viktor Orbán, would forsake his nation’s friendship with the first Christian nation on Earth, which is Armenia, if he and his government were not paid for doing it, if they were not paid for risking the Armenian element in order for some other elements to arrive [Safarov murdered an Armenian in Budapest].”

“Obviously, now, when we suddenly discover interesting flows of Azeri money to a Hungarian bank account at precisely the relevant time back in 2012 between – in the wider sense – Azerbaijan and Hungary, I must say that even if the amounts are nowhere near the 3 billion that I heard about at the time, but are the 8 or 9 million Euros that we are talking about now, and which are difficult to contest for the Hungarian authorities, it pretty much looks like pocket money received in return for a favor. But who received it is of course something we do not know.”