Budapest — George Soros’s Open Society Foundations will close its office in Budapest and move to the German capital of Berlin, the organisation said on Tuesday, leaving what it called an increasingly repressive political and legal environment. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has blamed Soros, a Hungarian-born US financier, for a host of ills and is planning to tighten a crackdown on nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) under legislation dubbed the "Stop Soros" bill. "The government of Hungary has denigrated and misrepresented our work, and repressed civil society for the sake of political gain, using tactics unprecedented in the history of the EU," Open Society Foundations president Patrick Gaspard said. A senior minister in Orban’s new government said on Monday that Hungary would tighten the bill on NGOs following the ruling party’s big election victory in April, a move likely to dismay the European Union and rights groups. Open Society said it would continue to support the w...
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