Fidesz accuses the opposition of bankrupting Budapest

The leadership of Budapest has “squandered reserves and driven the city to bankruptcy”, the Budapest chapter of the nationally governing Fidesz party said on Facebook on Thursday.

Mayor Gergely Karácsony and other national opposition leaders “won’t provide an answer to the question of where the money went … they are wrapped in stubborn denial,” they said.

Fidesz insisted that deputy mayor Ambrus Kiss had recently “tried to explain a messed up advertising tender”, which would have brought an annual HUF 1.7 billion (EUR 4.57 million) to the city for the right to use the advertising surfaces of public transport for 8 years.

They insisted that the city leaders should have signed an agreement with the French firm that won a contract to use advertising facilities connected to Budapest’s public transport, but the city “said no to those funds for reasons as yet unknown” and “put out the same tender, which the same company won once again,” he said, adding that the city would now receive two-and-a-half times less from the company.

In its statement, Fidesz also said the city’s finances were “nearly an annual HUF 1 billion (EUR 2.69 million) in the red”. “That one advertisement deal alone has made the city short of HUF 3.5 billion (EUR 9.42 million) since November 2019,” they added.