How do European Union funds end up in the hands of the Orbán family?

The European Union has been, wittingly or unwittingly, enriching members of the Orbán family. Today, in what is undoubtedly only one story of many, I’ll focus on Viktor Orbán’s eldest daughter, Ráhel.

The last time Ráhel, Rasi to her family and friends, was in the news was more than a year ago when she got married with great fanfare to István Tiborcz, a 27-year-old businessman with a law degree. In 2008 Tiborcz and a friend started a small business dealing with electrical and energy supplies. In 2009 the business had a modest profit of 8 million forints on which they paid 2 million in taxes. Two years later the annual profits of the groom’s business were over 2.5 billion forints.

Ráhel is in the news again. This time on account of her spending a year at the École Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland where she is working toward “an Executive MBA in Hospitality Administration.” Why the interest in Ráhel’s studies? The reason for all the fuss is the high tuition fee she has to pay for the two semesters she is spending in Lausanne. The cost is 60,000 Swiss francs or 15 million Hungarian forints. Because of the recent focus on alleged widespread corruption among Hungarian politicians, this tuition fee prompted questions about the source of the money. Journalists pointed the finger at Rasi’s father, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. How can he plop down 60,000 Swiss francs?

I, who followed the research done by Atlatszlo.hu at the time of the wedding and reported about the sudden enrichment of István Tiborcz, couldn’t quite understand why Hungarian journalists assumed that it had to be Orbán who footed the bill when Rasi has been married for over a year to a young man who since 2010 has become quite wealthy.

Ráhel became tired of all the questions and accusations and decided to speak up on her Facebook page. She said that she and her husband are paying her tuition, not her father. I’ll bet she regrets that decision now because her Facebook note prompted Atlatszlo.hu to look into Tiborcz’s more recent business affairs. And what they found is not pretty.

The happy couple

Of course there is nothing wrong with being a successful businessman, but István Tiborcz’s success most likely has nothing to do with his business acumen. Before Viktor Orbán became prime minister he owned a very modest business. The meteoric rise in his fortunes can be compared only to that of Lőrinc Mészáros: from 8 million in revenues in 2009 to 3 billion in 2011.

How did he achieve this incredible feat? In 2010 one of Közgép’s divisions purchased the majority of shares in Tiborcz’s business and used it as yet another of its conduits for EU cohesion funds. The customers of E-Os Innovatív Zrt., as the business was renamed, were almost exclusively municipal governments with Fidesz mayors. They contracted with E-Os to do work that was funded by cohesion funds from Brussels.

For reasons that are unclear, in 2012, according to publicly available information, Tiborcz’s business was renamed Elios Innovatív Zrt. and Közgép no longer had a majority stake. Two companies bought out Közgép, one of which, Green Investments, was owned by a former partner of István Tiborcz, Endre Hamar. The change in ownership had a decidedly negative impact on the company’s revenues. In 2012 Elios Innovatív Zrt. grossed only 20 million forints. Three weeks after the 2014 national election, however, Tiborcz bought out his former partner Endre Hamar, and from there on business boomed.

Tiborcz’s firm installs street lighting. Atlatszo.hu lists 2.9 billion forints worth of contracts with different municipalities: Hévíz, Balatonfüred, Kecskemét, Szekszárd, Dunaújváros, Sopron, Hatvan, Kalocsa, Bicske, just to mention a few. Most of these revenues (2.1 billion) were the result of a tender issued by the Nemzeti Fejlesztési Ügynökség (National Development Agency) and financed by the European Union. Local governments could apply for grants to reduce their energy costs; if successful, they received large sums of money to have the appropriate work done.

There are strict EU guidelines that the Hungarian authorities must follow. The most important rule is that the firm that prepares the technical details must not in any way be connected with the successful bidder. However, as Atlatszo.hu discovered, most of the tenders Tiborcz’s firm won were prepared by his former partner, Endre Hamar, who owned another company called Sistrade Kft. It is likely that Hamar and Tiborcz acted in collusion, making Tiborcz’s bid fraudulent. In fact, Atlatszo.hu notes that the arrangement was so bizarre, and presumably illegal, that Hamar was still an owner of Elios Innovatív Zrt. at the end of April 2014 when the firm signed the contract with the city of Héviz.

Atlatszo.hu did a yeoman’s job in trying to make sense of the company’s shifting identity and ownership structure. Unfortunately, many questions remain. One that baffles me is the role of Simicska’s Közgép. I find it more than a little odd that Simicska’s Közgép shows up to support the fledgling business of István Tiborcz, already known to be Ráhel’s boyfriend, only to withdraw from the firm after its spectacular growth. Közgép is not, as far as I know, active in venture capital or private equity. And, as the next year’s revenues showed, Tiborcz’s company was not ready to stand on its own.

I think it would be high time for Brussels to take a harder look at some of the businesses–and individuals–that profit from its largesse. Let’s not forget that in this case we are talking about the daughter and son-in-law of the prime minister. Surely, the goal of the EU convergence program is not to make the Orbán family rich.