The Hungarian government claims a suspected Islamic State terrorist who entered Europe posing as a refugee was in possession of a pre-paid debit card from the European Union, and that the EU has issued 64,000 such cards to migrants.
“A Syrian national by the name of F. Hassan was detained in Budapest by the officers of the Counter-terrorism Centre (TEK) on suspicion of acts of terror, including involvement in explosive attacks and carrying out multiple executions in his homeland in 2016,” reported Dr Zoltán Kovács, Hungary’s Secretary of State for International Communications international spokesman for the Cabinet Office of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
“TEK collaborated with Europol and the secret services of several countries to investigate the alleged criminal activities and European network of the Syrian man, who is thought to have been a high-ranking IS leader,” Kovács continued, describing how the asylum seeker had claimed he was working for the Greek security services after being discovered and brought to court.
“[T]his story has a deeply disturbing side,” he went on, claiming that, after initial denials, “the [European] Commission finally admitted that the United Nations and the European Union have been distributing [pre-paid debit] cards to migrants who have reached the territory of the EU” — with some 64,000 of them allegedly distributed to migrants “in January alone”.
“And it gets worse,” Kovács added. “Reports say that [the suggested jihadist] received a monthly payment of 500 EUR on his debit card. That’s well over today’s gross minimum wage in Hungary.”
“The pro-immigration interests in Brussels are going too far. How many European citizens would knowingly support half-baked ideas like distributing to migrants pre-paid debit cards, charged up with EU taxpayer money? Not only will it do nothing to stop migration, but worse, this will put the safety of Europeans at risk,” he blasted.
Claims that the European Union, the United Nations, and billionaire open borders activist George Soros have been distributing anonymous, pre-paid debit cards to migrants, either in concert or through separate initiatives, have been a bone of contention between pro- and anti-mass migration commentators for some time.
Left-leaning fact-checkers such as AfricaCheck, which is part-funded by Soros’s Open Society NGO, have dismissed the claims as false, especially as they pertain to their donor — but the European Commission has now admitted that it uses the money it takes from EU member-states, including the United Kingdom, to fund “a programme run by the UNHCR for pre-paid debit cards for refugees and asylum seekers in Greece.”
The Commission claims the cards are limited to refugees and asylum seekers, not anonymous, and only valid in Greece — but the Hungarians have disputed their version of events.
“The EC… says that ‘there are no anonymous debit cards’. However, they themselves admit that the single form of identification regarding the bank cards is a number,” Kovács wrote in early March.
“Did you get that? While EU nationals are required to abide by strict regulations to hold bank cards, Brussels doesn’t expect the same from migrants whose identities are often impossible to establish,” he complained.
The Hungarian minister also claimed that issuing the cards to refugees and asylum seekers “blurs the lines between refugees and economic migrants.”
“Economic migrants may also submit asylum applications, but submission of an application does not in itself mean that the applicant is a refugee,” he pointed out.
“This not only creates another pull factor, it also raises serious security concerns. The citizens of Europe have a right to know.”
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