Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said he was outraged by the severance payment scandals of the past few weeks, speaking on commercial television channel RTL Klub on Wednesday.

"Municipally or state-owned companies should not apply for subsidies until they tidy up their finances," Bajnai said, referring to several recent cases in which public firms had granted exorbitant severance payments to some of their senior officials.

The prime minister noted that most of the companies in question were notorious for their chronic financial problems and dependency on municipal or central assistance. The government has initiated measures to put a cap on those payments in the future as well as to make the companies publish their management payroll, he added.

According to press reports, Budapest's ailing public transportation company BKV might have used as much as 1.5 billion forints (EUR 5.4m) to give generous sums to employees leaving the company during the past two years. In a recent scandal, BKV continued to employ its HR head - after she had received 100 million forints (EUR 365,000) as severance payment upon her retirement.