Former mayor: Budapest leadership wouldn’t be blameless in potential bankruptcy
The current Budapest administration would be “far from blameless” if the capital were to go bankrupt, István Tarlós, the city’s former mayor, told the daily Magyar Nemzet on Thursday.
Tarlós spoke to Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Gazette) in connection with last week’s reports that Budapest’s leadership had told the finance ministry in March that the capital would go bankrupt.
“I don’t know for certain how much truth there is to a direct threat of bankruptcy,” Tarlós told the paper. “It may or may not be true. The city administration isn’t keeping to the rules of mathematics when it comes to numbers, that much has been clear for a long time.”
He said Gergely Karácsony would not want to be known as the first mayor in Budapest’s 150-year history under whom the city goes bankrupt, either.
“For my part, I don’t wish bankruptcy on the city or Karácsony, but if it does happen, the city leadership would be far from blameless,” Tarlós said.
The former mayor said his administration had inherited a debt of HUF 251 billion EUR 665.8m) in 2010 but handed over the city with reserves of around HUF 200 billion in 2019. It should also be noted that business tax revenues under Karácsony’s mayorship increased by HUF 107 billion, he added.
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The mayor who let down the city with the reused, garbage M3 train cars? He let the city down, that’s why he lost. As for city taxes, you see it all over Hungary. Fidesz changes the distribution of tax monies and who and what can be taxed in order to fund itself, not the cities Hungarians are trying to survive in. Hungary is a rigged mafia system run by Fidesz. They would rather bankrupt the capital and build a stadium or refurbish a castle for some Fidesz supporter. Such a sad situation, there was so much potential.