English

We published data on communication spending of the Pécs 2010 project

Hundreds of million forints were distributed to politically connected ventures when in 2010 Pécs was selected as the European Capital of Culture. Although the project was financed from state money, spending figures on communication and marketing were only made public recently following a request by Nóra Somlyódi, journalist. The majority of the expenses was put together by the Ministry of Education (today part of the Ministry of National Resources) and the local goverment of Pécs, based on a contract signed in 2006. Although the local organizers had expected to have a say in how the money is spent (they were co-finacing the project with the Mininistry) the budget was put entiry in the hands of Hungarofest NKft, an event organizing not for profit organization  – belonging to the National Fund for Culture at the time, and to the Hungarian Development Bank (Magyar Fejlesztési Bank) today. We published all the data obtained by Somlyódi through repeated freedom of information requests in the last two years.

>>> Proceed to the article in Hungarian here

 

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