Here is when the new Hungarian Golden Visa scheme starts: will Hungarian and Chinese businessmen supervise it?
The new Hungarian Golden Visa programme will start later than previously expected. It seems that the same business circle is around it that pumped a lot of money from its predecessor programme in 2017.
Money for Schengen visa
According to Telex, a similar money-for-Schengen-visa programme was conducted until 2017 spring. The idea was Antal Rogán’s, one of PM Viktor Orbán‘s most powerful ministers, supervising even the Hungarian secret services.
In that period, Hungary issued 7,309 residency permits in return for the state bonds the foreign investors bought. 87% of the buyers were Chinese. All buyers received the price of the bonds after five years, and the Hungarian state lost billions on the business. That is because if Budapest had taken that money from the banks, the interest rate would have been lower. Meanwhile, the companies supervising the scheme won approximately HUF 100 billion (EUR billions, the exchange is difficult because the forint was stronger then, and the Hungarian journalists calculated in forints).
The new program—set to start on 1 January 2025—will give residency permits to foreign investors if they put their money into Hungarian property investment bonds, Hungarian property or a foundation-run Hungarian university. The price categories are different: EUR 250,000, EUR 500,000 and EUR 1 million, respectively.
Hungarian and Chinese businessmen around the Golden Visa scheme
Telex focuses on the first category when you collect EUR 250,000 and buy property investment bonds. The law regulating that is HERE.
In the first residency bond scheme, the Hungarian State Special Debt Fund (HSSDF), an offshore company, was the key player in purchasing the bonds in China and Vietnam. As a reminder, 87% of the “investors” came from China. They got a Schengen visa for their investment, so it was worth it.
Telex writes that the owners of the HSSDF were Attila Boros, the former CEO of Hajdú-Bét, and the Chinese Lian Wang, Simon Mu, Jonathan Chan and Lisa Wu.
New company, well-known names
This March, the Sprint Asset Hungária Alapkezelő Ltd. was created with the same activity field; purchasing residency bonds. Its owner is Sprint Asset Holding Ltd., owned by Lian Wang. In the directorate, there are Szilárd Gerencsér, Ignác Siba and Lian Wang, while the members of the supervisory board are Barna Semsey, Jonathan Chan, and Gao Feng.
Telex wrote that Mr Semsey contributed to the acquisition of the MKB Bank, from which the new Hungarian superbank, the MBH Bank, was born in 2023. Jonathan Chan appeared in the Hungarian news when he paid for Árpád Habony’s and his girlfriend’s helicopter tour in Hong Kong.
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Good.
Pay us to come and have enough money to support yourself while here. That’s what we want.
The EUrotrash can cry us a river. They prefer to wave in the worst-quality, poorest, most violent, most incompatible people on the planet who go on to cause enormous trouble and are a drain on the taxpayer for at least two generations. I’ll take this “golden visa” scheme over that any day of the week.
Pay to play – great concept!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-to-play