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Budapest mayor calls on asset manager to release planned tender documents on Rákosrendező project
Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony on Thursday said he is filing a request for data of public interest with the National Asset Manager (MNV) for the documents on a previously planned tender for the project to redevelop the capital city’s Rákosrendező area.
Budapest mayor calls for action
In a post on Facebook, Karácsony said he was seeking the release of “every document, fact and piece of data that explain how an open tender would have turned into the shadiest government property deal of the century had Budapest not intervened”.
Addressing criticisms that other property developers had previously prepared renderings for the redevelopment of the Rákosrendező area, Karácsony said they had been hired to do so by the MNV in 2023 for an open international tender.
“So two years ago, the National Asset Manager wasn’t preparing for a secret deal with an Arab billionaire, but an open, international tender,” Karácsony said, adding that this plan was later “thrown out, along with the public funds spent on it”.
The standpoint of Fidesz
Alexandra Szentkirályi, the head of ruling Fidesz’s Budapest chapter, on Thursday said the opposition city leadership wanted to hand over the 14th district’s Rákosrendező development area to a “circle of left-wing investors” in hopes of getting funding for the 2026 election campaign in return.
Speaking to news channel M1 in connection with the metropolitan assembly’s resolution expressing the city council’s intention to exercise its pre-emption rights over the Rákosrendező area via utility company BKM, Szentkirályi said the purchase price for the area is more than 50 billion forints (EUR 122.5m) plus VAT, and an additional 20-40 billion forints could be needed to recultivate it.
She said she did not understand how the city council had found the resources to purchase the area, arguing that in recent months the city administration had blocked projects like road renovations and the construction of P+R car parks saying that they did not have the funds for them. Szentkirályi said Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony had failed to deliver on his campaign promise to complete the City Hall Park project, “yet now there’s suddenly a desire and money for investment”. She said “the same circle of investors that emerged in connection with the sale of City Hall” now wanted to “get their hands on” Rákosrendező.
“The leftist formations were already getting money from the US for political activities,” Szentkirályi said. “But it’s a new world there now and the globalist money taps will be turned off.” She said the left needed someone to finance their 2026 election campaign, and had found it in the form of the Wallis Group, which had prepared bids and plans for the redevelopment of Rákosrendező in 2023. “They’re not interested in creating a green residential area, they just want the area to go to this group of investors in hopes of getting funding for the 2026 election campaign in return,” Szentkirályi said.
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