Orbán confidant offers his companies to the state
Gyula Balásy, a media boss with close ties to Fidesz, offered on Monday to hand over his companies to the Hungarian state for free. Under Viktor Orbán, these companies received numerous lucrative government contracts, among other things for Orbán's campaigns. Although Balásy claims his motivation is to safeguard the jobs of his approximately 500 employees, he is also under investigation on suspicion of embezzlement and money laundering.
Swift action against profiteers
Gazeta Wyborcza is astonished:
“A businessman who ranks among Hungary's wealthiest and made a fortune through state propaganda is asking the state to save his companies and is even prepared to hand them over. The authorities have launched an investigation into money laundering. ... There are many indications that the authorities – without waiting for a change of government – have already begun to freeze the assets of those who may have accumulated them illegally under Orbán's government. During the election campaign, Magyar already announced that there would be investigations and the establishment of an authority specialised in recovering assets that previously belonged to the state.”
Unacceptable revenge campaign
The Fidesz-aligned newspaper Magyar Nemzet claims that underhand methods were used to pressure Balásy into taking this step:
“What is unfolding before our very eyes is unacceptable: a major businessman who carried out his work on the basis of contracts he won under the watchful eye of the previous opposition is being driven to ruin and intimidated without judicial authorisation. ... Everything points to Balásy having been forced – and once again: without any authorisation from the courts, the public prosecutor’s office or the police – to renounce his entire corporate and private assets in tears on the in-house channel of the prime minister-designate, who has not yet been elected by Parliament, thereby satisfying the Tisza leader's [Péter Magyar's] thirst for revenge.”
Make him pay for all the lies
It is not only the punishable offences that are reprehensible in this particular case, Magyar Hang stresses:
“There are undoubtedly allegations at play here that neither the public prosecutor's office nor the court can do anything about. For example, the fear-mongering and the flood of lies that Gyula Balásy is now downplaying so demonstratively. ... In Tiszabő [a village in eastern Hungary], children were actually scared on 12 April [election day] after Tisza won the parliamentary elections. Well, Gyula Balásy's companies played a central role in making these boys believe that they would now have to go to war and die fighting.”
A warning to Fico
Sme recommends that Slovaks keep a close eye on developments in their neighbouring country:
“After all, even the propaganda machine built up by Robert Fico won't last forever. Péter Magyar will make the Slovak Prime Minister uneasy, above all with his stance that assets stolen from the public purse must be returned to the state. ... In this way, he demonstrates that the oligarchic class, which Orbán spent years building up as the wielder of economic power, is not unassailable. Naturally, Magyar must act within the law when dismantling Orbán’s oligarchy and propaganda factories. ... Should he succeed, however, it will be clear that those who embezzle public funds in Slovakia are no longer safe either.”