Companies connected to PM Orban’s friend won public tenders worth €1.56 billion, most of it funded by the EU

According to the official registry of public tenders, Lőrinc Mészáros and his family won public tenders worth €1.56 billion by the end of last year. Moreover, 83 percent of that money (€1.3 billion) came from European Union funds. Mészáros is a friend of prime minister Viktor Orban and mayor of the small village where Orban hails from. During this time the Hungarian PM has been constantly attacking Brussels and said that it was not EU funds that were driving the Hungarian economy.  

We looked at the official journal of public tenders and created a database of public tenders won by the companies owned by Mészáros and his family. We included the companies owned by Mészáros’s children, son-in-law and brother.

According to news magazine Heti Válasz Mészáros has 203 companies by now, there are only a handful that bid for public tenders.

These are the following nine companies:

Mészáros és Mészáros Kft.: owned by Lőrinc Mészáros and his wife

R-Kord Kft.:  owned by Lőrinc Mészáros since 2013.03.08.

Euro Generál Zrt.: since 2015.03.17. owned by Opimus Group Nyrt., which is owned by Lőrinc Mészáros

Mediaworks Zrt.: since 2016.11.14-től owned by Opimus Press Zrt., which is owned by Opimus Group Nyrt., which is owned by Lőrinc Mészáros

CLH Klímaszervíz Kft.: since 2015.06.01. owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, László Szíjj and Károly Varga

CLH Hűtés- és Klímatechnikai Kft.: since 2015.06.01. owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, László Szíjj and Károly Varga

Agro-Felcsút: owned by János Mészáros, brother of Lőrinc Mészáros

Fejér-B.Á.L. Zrt.: owned by the children of  Lőrinc Mészáros, Ágnes, Beatrix and Lőrinc Jr.

Homlok Zrt.: its majority of shares is owned by  Lőrinc Mészáros’s son-in-law, Zsolt Homlok (Ágnes’s husband)

€1.56 billion in seven years

According to the official registry of public tenders, the nine companies owned by Lőrinc Mészáros and his family won public tenders worth €1.56 billion by the end of last year. Eighty-three percent of that money (€1.3 billion) came from European Union funds.

Only half of the public tenders were open

During the past seven years the nine companies we examined won 83 public tenders. Our database includes 97 tenders because we included the modifications to existing contracts as well if they modified the price.

Out of the 97 tenders only 48 were open tenders where (in theory) anyone was able to bid and the Mészáros-companies might have had competition.

The database we compiled shows that the companies connected to Mészáros and his family are usually not bidding for these jobs alone but as members of consortiums. The reason for that is most probably that as new players in the field the Mészáros-companies did not have the required references, equipment or human resources to fulfil the requirements of the public tenders alone.

It was in 2014 that Mészáros és Mészáros Kft, owned by Mészáros and his wife, won a public tender alone for the first time. But even in 2017 they won the majority of their public tenders as members of consortiums.

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Written by Katalin Erdélyi

You can read the original story in Hungarian here.

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