On the occasion of the commemoration of the 1848–49 Revolution, President Tamás Sulyok awarded the Hungarian Order of Merit to Tamás Keresztes, Director of Coordination.
Tamás Keresztes received the state honour in recognition of his outstanding professional work spanning several decades, which was dedicated to ensuring the transparent and responsible use of public funds, safeguarding public finances and the state budget, continuously improving the efficiency of tax procedures, and methodologically renewing the supervision of the financial system.
For thirty years, Tamás Keresztes has been contributing to the monitoring of the efficiency of the Hungarian financial system. He began his career at the Hungarian Tax and Financial Control Administration, where, first as a tax officer and later as head of department, he played a key role in coordinating, regulating, and overseeing tax-related activities. Throughout his professional career, he has received numerous awards and honours.
After 14 years at the tax office, he joined the State Audit Office of Hungary (SAO), where he first worked as an auditor and later as an audit manager, participating in audits of the use of public funds, with a particular focus on the financial management of higher education institutions, the operations of the Hungarian Competition Authority, and the audit of the central government’s final accounts and budget planning.
Drawing on his experience in the auditing field, he served as Director of Methodology in the supervisory division of the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) starting in 2015, where he was responsible for renewing the methodology for auditing the money, capital, and insurance markets, as well as for improving the regulatory framework of internal processes. It was under his leadership that the first milestones of the MNB’s sustainable and green finance initiatives were achieved. Since 2022, he has been working as Coordination Director at the SAO. In this role, he plays a key role in developing and implementing the SAO’s strategy, ensuring the professional quality of audits, and modernizing and improving the efficiency of public finance audits.