Corruption: iconic Budapest hotel sold below the market price to PM Orbán’s son-in-law?

Péter Magyar, the leader of the opposition Tisza Party, has slammed deputies of the leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) and ruling Fidesz in the Budapest municipal assembly for “voting together with the mayor [Gergely Karácsony] to sell a part of Hotel Gellért below the market price to István Tiborcz’s circles”.

DK and Fidesz also voted down a proposal to change the assembly’s rules of operation under which “the mayor would have lost his unlimited power in the assembly,” Magyar said.

DK and Fidesz “do not want” deputies to control the selection of the heads of large municipal companies; neither do they want those officials to have a reporting obligation to deputies, Magyar insisted. “Surely they want to continue in the shady dealings they have shared,” he said.

Photo: FB/Hotel Gellért

Tisza votes down low household energy bills ‘yet again’, Fidesz’s Budapest leader says

The opposition Tisza Party in the city assembly has yet again voted against the government scheme which saves Hungarian households hundreds of thousands of forints each year on utility bills, Alexandra Szentkirályi, the leader of the Fidesz-Christian Democrat group in the assembly said on Thursday.

Szentkirályi said the party led by Péter Magyar had effectively voted in the energy committee to abolish the scheme, and she cited him as saying previously that the country had been held back because of the “useless” subsidy.

She noted that Fidesz put forward a motion in the city assembly on protecting and maintaining the utility scheme. “But all they could say — led by the Tisza Party — was that they did not support our proposal, and they voted it down,” she said.

The Fidesz politician said Hungarians paid the lowest utility bills in Europe, yet Tisza would “put an end to this in Hungary and Budapest as well”.

“They have proven this for the second time…” she added.

Multiple Fidesz proposals voted down by Budapest assembly, Szentkirályi added

The Budapest municipal assembly voted down several of ruling Fidesz’s proposals concerning housing affordability, Alexandra Szentkirályi, the head of the party’s Budapest chapter, said on Thursday.

Fidesz’s proposals had been aimed at getting the city council to take more effective steps towards resolving the housing crisis, Szentkirályi told public news channel M1.

She said the municipality’s housing agency had only managed to rent out eight flats over the last six months.

“The capital will be receiving billions in European Union funds, and the proposal was to use those funds to help build dorms or company flats instead of channelling the money into … the housing agency,” she said.

“There’s no shame in admitting that you can’t do something and asking for help,” Szentkirályi said. “If the city council is incapable of resolving the housing problem, the government will help.”

She added that she had held “promising talks” in the matter with the national economy minister.

Meanwhile, she said the city assembly had also voted down a proposal from Fidesz which would have called for exploring whether city housing stock could be used to resolve the housing crisis.

Szentkirályi added, at the same time, that the assembly had approved a proposal to look into the city council’s “inefficient” model aimed at keeping utility prices low.

Read also:

• Iconic Hotel Gellért undergoes grand restoration with luxury operator set to take over
• Check out some VISUALS how the hotel will look HERE