The Hungarian Executive Board has decided to set up an Ethics Committee following the scandal involving Zsolt Borkai ©MOB

Calls for former athletes to be stripped of their pensions if they are found to have engaged in immoral activity have been rejected by the Hungarian Olympic Committee (MOB), following the scandal involving its former President Zsolt Borkai.

Borkai was expelled from MOB last month after he found himself at the centre of a high profile sex scandal when he appeared in X-rated video.

The video, which showed the Olympics gymnastics gold medallist having sex with a young woman on a yacht, was broadcast a few days before key local elections in Hungary. 

The footage posted on Pornhub, the world's largest adult website, showed the 54-year-old Borkai cavorting around with prostitutes surrounded by bottles of alcohol on the yacht off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea.

Borkai at first claimed he was being targeted by a smear campaign to oust him from office, but later admitted it was him in the video.

He manged to retain his position as Mayor of Hungarian city Győr, but the scandal angered Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, an ally whose dominant right-wing Fidesz party suffered large losses in the local elections, which was partly blamed on the scandal.

Shortly after his election victory, Borkai stepped down as a member of Fidesz. 

Zsolt Borkai has been expelled from the Hungarian Olympic Committee after he appeared in a high-profile sex scandal, but will not be stripped of his pension awarded for his Seoul 1988 gymnastics gold medal ©Getty Images
Zsolt Borkai has been expelled from the Hungarian Olympic Committee after he appeared in a high-profile sex scandal, but will not be stripped of his pension awarded for his Seoul 1988 gymnastics gold medal ©Getty Images

Ádám Steinmetz, a member of Hungary's water polo team that won the Olympic gold medal at Athens 2004 and now a politician for Fidesz, urged Orbán in Parliament to strip Borkai of the monthly €1,000 (£850/$1,100) state pension awarded to him as a result of his victory at Seoul 1988.

Orbán claimed that was a matter for MOB to rule on.

Double Olympic fencing medallist Krisztián Kulcsár, who defeated Borkai in the election for President of MOB in 2017, has insisted that athletes should only be punished by having their pensions stopped if they are found guilty of a criminal offence.

Péter Farkas, a former Olympic champion in wrestling, had his pension withdrawn by MOB in 2009 after he was found guilty of producing marijuana and was sentenced to years in prison.

Steinmetz has since filed an amendment to the bill so that, in future, the MOB can rule on such cases.

MOB's Executive Board, however, claim "the Bill is not well prepared and is not in line with the Olympic idea and constitutional rights". 

The Board, however, have decided to set up a new MOB Ethics Committee to examine similar cases in the future.