As a recipient of the CEU-REF Scholarship for the academic year 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 I am enrolled at Department of Economics and Business at Central European University. This scholarship made possible to me to focus on my studies during these two academic years, and gave me the chance to take the next steps in my career in this motivating, inspiring ecosystem. I am a Hungarian investigative journalist. For the last 5 years I used to work for the economic and political weekly HVG, where I specialised in articles on corruption. For the time being I work as a freelancer, and also act as the Hungarian correspondent of TAZ - Die Tageszeitung in Germany.
As an investigative journalist I have a special interest in economic policies, including resourceallocation through public procurements, uncovering links between business and political elites, startup companies and media financing. So far, I have investigated the overlap between Hungarian and Czech companies and the Hungarian government, especially in the cases of the military expenditures of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior. In this investigation I explored a comprehensive corruption case. During my eight-year experience as a journalist, I found it important to understand the underlying mechanisms of economic behavior, the functioning of markets, the effects of regulations. This work required data analysis that allowed me to uncover general patterns and to collect evidence. That is the reason why I applied to Central European University Master of Arts program in Economic Policy in Global Markets, I have a chance to acquire the necessary skills to uncover even the more complex corruption cases and to enable me to provide more nuanced economic analyses. Moreover, this experience could provide me the necessary skills to realize my plan of building up an investigative anti-corruption network and online portal to uncover international corruption stories in Europe.