Charges brought against man who railed against hail damage mitigation system

By: STA Date: 2024. 12. 06. 09:45

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The Békéscsaba District Prosecutor’s Office has charged a 42-year-old man from Orosháza with attempted extortion and has filed a motion to impose a suspended prison sentence against a 42-year-old man with no criminal record from Orosháza who attempted to blackmail the Chamber of Agriculture in connection with the National Hail Damage Mitigation System, the Békés County Prosecutor’s Office told MTI on Saturday.

(Photo: Pixabay)

According to the information, the essence of the National Hail Damage Mitigation System is that soil generators operate throughout the country, and when they receive a signal of expected hail, these generators are turned on by district, which emit silver iodide, which prevents the formation of larger ice grains. This system cannot dry out the air, does not reduce the amount of precipitation, and does not cause drought, they added. Despite this, the man, as the administrator of several pages with a large number of followers on a social media portal and in the closed groups he created, slandered and spread false information about the dangerous effects of the ice damage mitigation system on weather and health, as well as about its operators.

As a result, threats against the system’s generator operators in Békés County were continuous starting in 2022 – the statement said

Between July 28 and August 25, the man sent 14 threatening e-mail messages from his own e-mail address to the official e-mail address of the county director of the Chamber of Agriculture, demanding money, in order to gain illegal profit. In the emails, the defendant threatened the Chamber of Agriculture with violence, for example, saying that if they did not pay him 22 million forints, he would no longer hold back the angry farmers, and that they would smash the system’s generators and would not “treat the generator operators and the chamber’s leaders with gloves,” the prosecutor’s office wrote. According to the statement, “the man’s threats raised serious concerns in the management of the Chamber of Agriculture, as he had incited farmers against the chamber in previous years, as a result of which soil generator operators in Békés county suffered atrocities, which is why many of them resigned, and the vacant positions make it impossible to operate the system.” The Chamber of Agriculture did not pay the man, but filed a police report, the statement said.

MTI