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The secret history of the 2018 elections in 84 color pages.
I’ll buy it
On the first Tuesday of November, in the early hours of the morning, we entered the parking lot next to the Gant dolomite mine.
At the reception we said we wanted to speak to the owner of the mining company. Barely a minute passed before the door next to the door opened: Győző Orbán, the Prime Minister’s father, appeared in front of us wearing a black sweater, a surgical mask on his face, and glasses on his forehead.
We have been dealing with the public works of the old Orbán company for more than three years. We went to Gant to ask him personally about his assignments, after our previous emails and phone calls went unanswered.
Viktor Orbán had previously specifically asked his father not to participate in public investment. In recent years, however, we have presented in a series of articles that the spectacular rise of Dolomit Kft. (And its annual profit of billions) is due, among other things, to the fact that the company supplies construction materials for constructions financed with public funds.
In connection with this, we have recently demanded about one hundred thousand pages of project documents, based on which we have already written that stone was delivered from Orbán’s parent company for the construction of the M4 motorway.
After reviewing the entire file, we also found Dolomit Kft. In new state projects: the company supplied concrete elements for the construction of the M3 motorway and crushed stone for the renovation of the railway between Budapest and Székesfehérvár.
“I’ve been polite so far”
In all cases, prior to the publication of our articles, we have sent questions to Dolomit Kft., Which is majority owned by the former Orbán Győző, by email a total of ten times, and we have called the company several times, but never we have received a reply. We would like to know that your company:
With these questions we also arrive at the door of the mining company Gant. After a short wait, Győző Orbán, an old man, walked out the door, but wanted to close the conversation:
“Honey, I want to say: there is a coronavirus epidemic, we are not accepting anyone. Thank you for visiting us here, see you again ”, he said. Although he and we wore masks and suggested that we speak on the phone, Orbán replied “no way” and then closed the door behind him.
At the exit, we stopped in the company courtyard for a few minutes, in front of the doorman building, before Orbán appeared again to send us out. At that time we had the opportunity to ask several questions, but Orbán said that he did not agree with us recording it. (In view of the legislation, we will respect this, so we will provide the details of the discussion in writing.)
– Orbán Győző (OGY): Until now I have been educated. Listen, I’m famous for being rude and I don’t want to be rude, especially to a lady.
– Blanka Zöldi (ZB): We would like to ask about public affairs, about …
– OGY: I don’t care.
– ZB: Viktor Orbán said before that he does not think it is good for you to get involved in public investment.
– OGY: Dear … It’s a good time, it’s a beautiful time, we can talk about that. In a quarry, unfortunately, if it rains, it counts as a bad time. When the sun shines, we have a good time too. Goodbye.
– ZB: Maybe we can take a look at the quarry here in good weather?
OGY: Honey, don’t try it, because I’m running out of patience and I’ll be rude. (…) Another thing is not to harass an eighty-year-old man. Goodbye.
– ZB: I don’t want to harass you, I want to ask you about public affairs.
– OGY: Harassment, harassment, literally harassment. Let’s go.
Meanwhile, an employee of the mining company began to videotape us from the side, then Orbán also took out his phone: “If you allow me, I will only take a photo of you to remember this,” and then I will take a photo of us. And we asked Orban more:
– ZB: When will you answer these questions?
– OGY: When the epidemic ends.
– ZB: So this is a promise for an interview when the epidemic ends?
– OGY: I don’t give an interview to anyone. All the information you need is registered with the registry court and the public must be informed. That’s.
Then Győző Orbán got into his car parked in front of the door. “I don’t have to report you anymore,” she said out the window, pushing him out of the mine yard.
Győző Orbán has already made it clear that he does not appreciate the interest of journalists. In 2002, a trial was initiated against the Prime Minister’s father on suspicion of vandalism, after he fired the camera of Magyar Hírlap’s photographer, Tamás Dezső, who was trying to take photographs of the Gán mine. The police finally ended the investigation, claiming that “no crime could be identified.”
Public works remain hidden
Senior Orbán Győző is right that information about his company can be found in the registry court. For example, the fact that Dolomit Kft. Has become one of the best performing companies on the market in recent years has essentially outperformed all competitors in terms of profitability. It closed last year with a profit of 1.8 billion HUF, which the owners withdrew from the company as dividends.
However, no public data is available on the amount of the company’s revenue that comes from publicly funded projects. The Orbán family companies do not participate in state construction projects as general contractors, but as suppliers of construction materials in general, so the details of the orders remain hidden.
Therefore, in 2017, Direkt36 launched a public interest data expert for the detailed data of 6 large state road and rail construction, with the help of the human rights organization Society for Freedom Rights (HCLU) and attorney Dr. Zsolt Szegedi. After three years of litigation, we obtained 28 cardboard boxes of almost 100,000 pages of documents.
Among them, delivery notes, quality certificates for construction materials and declarations of performance show that Dolomit Kft., In addition to the state projects presented above, also participated in the construction of the M3 motorway and the renovation of the railway line between Budapest-Kelenföld and Székesfehérvár.
The railway line between Budapest and Székesfehérvár was renovated from HUF 86.8 billion between 2009 and 2014, for which several dolomite molds from the older company Győző Orbán were delivered.
The 11.9-kilometer section of the M3 motorway between Őr and Vásárosnamény was built with 15.5 billion HUF between 2013 and 2014. According to the documents, concrete elements from Dolomit Kft. Were used in this section, including for the construction of trenches drainage.
We also asked the main construction contractors how much money they bought construction materials from the mining company in Gant, but did not get a response from them either. And Viktor Orbán’s press officer, Bertalan Havasi, used to say only that “the prime minister does not deal with commercial matters.”
András Pethő contributed to the preparation of the article.
We use Opten services for company data.
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