Index – Economy – The true story of Kartonpack Dobozipari Nyrt., Which is under state supervision

So far, the government has put a company under state control under the coronavirus: Kartonpack Dobozipari Nyrt. In Debrecen. The company is not a really significant national packaging company, its turnover is around HUF 2 billion a year, although the company is profitable, its profitability is low.

In recent years, he has had trouble paying for raw materials in euros, but his Hungarian customers have settled for him in guilders, so the weakening of the guilder has taken most of the profit.

Pressure box

The company’s activities are neither life-saving nor irreplaceable, and the operation was not in jeopardy. Kartonpack mainly produces boxes for pharmaceutical companies (especially for national manufacturers Egis and Richter Gedeon) and, to a lesser extent, for food companies.

The model is as follows: Kartonpack buys a so-called paper cut and a printing line paints the print on the cardboard, that is, it labels the medicine boxes with all the necessary information.

For example, the company’s added value lies in its ability to accommodate raised text that is also palpable to the blind. It is a valuable company, but we cannot think that state oversight of this company is more important at the time of the epidemic.

Einstand

The company never really had a problem with management or employees, it always did its job reliably, with solid earnings but operating stably. Emotions, the disputes were always linked to the owners.

Kartonpack was managed for a long time by a well-known specialist, Gábor Tóth, who has worked for the company from the beginning, from the small cooperative’s past, had personal contacts with clients. Although Tóth retired last year, even then a close old colleague, Ildikó Bagdi, Production Manager, took over the management of the company.

Wild Property Battles

The root of current events is related to the owners and even to the Kulcsár case, which became famous as a major broker scandal. The K&H banker attempted to acquire several publicly listed companies. (The memorable scandal erupted around the acquisition of Pannonplast, but by then the Kartonpack had been swallowed up by the Kulcsárék circle.)

This is a winding story, but two major teams remain in today’s owner circle, rounded off by well-known Kartonpack Plc owners:

• 62 percent – Britton Kft. (This company may be a prominent and familiar figure in the Kulcsár case, Csaba Kerék, a second-degree defendant in the Kulcsár case, who received a final prison sentence, and therefore he was expelled from the company administration).

• 30 percent: Ádám Fintha-Nagy, a well-known star lawyer, also handled the Kulcsár case as a lawyer for DBI Kft., A registered trademark of György Dunai, a construction billionaire. According to an investigation by MNB, using this position, he became an internal shareholder of Kartonpack (he bought Attila Kulcsár’s interest package in the US on a stock list). Criminal proceedings have also been initiated in the case, so the lawyer is still unable to exercise his shareholder rights.

Csaba Kerék will take his place after speaking to the right of the last word in the Metropolitan Court in the Kulcsár trial on August 22, 2008.

Photo: Bruzák Noémi / MTI

Confiscation, execution

Following the brokerage scandal, a full confiscation of Britton Kft’s assets was ordered. There are all sorts of disputes and lawsuits about it, Britton once had three interesting assets (a hotel in Visegrád, a shopping center in Oradea and Kartonpack), each of which was followed by a crazy fight after the Kulcsár case.

In this case, it is not the state that receives the shares directly, but the bailiff (until February 2020, the bailiff under the rules, the NAV under the new rules) can sell the property at auction , and the Hungarian state is entitled to income.

The purchase offer

Yes, but the role of Adam Fintha-Nagy is important to that. Bought the package for 612 HUF per share. But if someone else buys the 62 percent lead package at auction, it exceeds the 33 percent stake in a publicly traded company, which means the other shareholders have to make a takeover bid.

Adam Fintha-Nagy still got a 32% discount, but since then Kartonpack prices have risen so high on the stock market that

after the auction, the buyer would have to pay about 20 thousand forints per share (there are strict rules on the purchase offer price, but it is not possible to pay less than the average price of the previous six months), although according to one realistic valuation of the company, one or two thousand forints is worth a paper “.

Although Ádám Fintha-Nagy was convicted by the MNB for insider trading, and there is currently one criminal case in history, which means that neither Britton’s package nor Ádám Fintha-Nagy is solved, but

Of course, state oversight due to the emergency can now transform everything.

MNV has already tried

The state-owned Hungarian National Property Manager (MNV) has been taking legal action for some time, contesting the decisions of the general meeting, or trying to sit in the Kartonpack and take control, which means he wanted to vote with the documents sentenced to confiscation.

But on the go, due to a completely different matter, her situation became more difficult. The Association of Individual Exchange Investors (TEBÉSZ) itself has contested a Kartonpack General Meeting and, according to the reasoning of the final judicial decision, Britton Kft. It can vote with the shares until the execution is carried out.

Meanwhile, the foreclosure process began, a forensic expert was asked to determine the starting price, and now the extraordinary measure has been included in this ongoing series of events.

Epidemiological change

Therefore, when MNV registered before this year’s Kartonpack general meeting that it was entitled to vote at the general meeting, the company rejected this.

Kartonpack’s board of directors has people Britton voted for, partly Csaba Kerék’s confidants (like his brother), and the epidemic would have even allowed the board to temporarily make board decisions instead of the general meeting.

The Csorna case

With so much background and litigation, it can be seen that the state could have guarded the company, but in fact it is still difficult to understand why this company was so important. But, just to make the story even more complicated,

In December, one of Kartonpack’s subsidiaries, Thin Film Solar Zrt., Announced that it had filed a $ 600 million lawsuit against EcoSolifer AG in Switzerland because it said it owned a 40 percent stake in the Csorna solar panel plant.

With the planned solar plant in President János Áder’s hometown, state-owned Exim burned down for the first time, but in a completely incomprehensible way, the state did not escape the confusing OLAF-investigated investment, digging further, and MFB opened a much larger line of credit.

From here, it will be worth paying attention to what the state is doing. On the one hand, as a lender, you are interested in that everything related to the solar solar plant is in order, production can start and there should be no disputes or lawsuits in the company. Yes, but in the meantime, the representatives of the state also took over the administration of a liana company that was only fighting for its tasks. If the now state-controlled kartonpack had a sudden withdrawal, the interests of a Hungarian-listed company owned by foreign investors, Kartonpack, would be hurt, and if demand is in full swing, a state actor would enter a legal conflict with the other state actor.

Also, so even international investigations are likely to take place. It is not possible to know for sure, but when the last investigation and irregularity procedure was started in Parliament regarding the EU support for the Csorna solar panel plant, the procedure was still ongoing in autumn 2019, according to the response. to Ágnes Vadai’s question.

(Cover image: During production, two employees will review a test print at the Kartonpack Dobozipari Nyrt plant. Plant in Debrecen in November 2016. – photo: Tibor Oláh / MTI)