The story of the dirty diaper brought István Tiborcz, a tainted businessman, and his wife Ráhel Orbán, the eldest daughter of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, back into the limelight. And, by the way, despite protestations to the contrary by the Fidesz faithful, the truthfulness of the diaper story was settled when Zsolt Bayer of Magyar Idők, who happens to be a personal friend of the family, confirmed that the woman on the Nyugati Fény photos was indeed Ráhel and that she did leave the package in a Croatian rest station.
Today The Wall Street Journal published an article by Drew Hinshaw and Jay Greene about a U.S. Justice Department investigation of Microsoft over “potential bribery and corruption related to software sales in Hungary.” The investigation is being carried out under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law that prohibits businesses from paying bribes to officials in corrupt governments in order to conduct business in those countries. According to The Wall Street Journal, yearly about $30 million worth of software was sold through intermediaries to the Hungarian government, “sometimes at discounts that could run as high as 30%,” with the permission of “rogue Hungarian employees” of the firm. These discounts were not passed on to the government agencies but most likely landed in the bank accounts of the middlemen.
Perhaps the most significant sentences in the article are the following: “Microsoft in 2012 made an effort to dissuade the Hungarian government from using free word-processing and spreadsheet software from rivals. In November 2012, then-Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who brought with him a group of small company owners.” The suggestion is that there was an understanding between Kevin Turner and Viktor Orbán that there was a price to be paid for conducting business with the Hungarian government. Could this cozy arrangement be unearthed in the course of the investigation? If so, it would be a huge embarrassment for the Hungarian prime minister.
But what does the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of Microsoft have to do with István Tiborcz? It is true that there is nothing about Orbán’s son-in-law in the WSJ article, but Hungarian investigative journalists learned at the very end of March of this year that István Tiborcz had purchased a company in March 2014 called HCS Experts Kft., a communication consulting firm with very modest capital and revenue. A year after Tiborcz bought the firm, the company’s revenues were up tenfold, to almost half a billion forints. All of the profits for that year, nearly 400 million forints, were taken out as dividends. HCS was apparently staffed by very few people, mostly secretaries.
Népszava described HCS Experts Kft. as a company engaged in “somewhat mysterious business activities,” most likely influence peddling, making sure that Microsoft Hungary picked the right “large account resellers.” On the basis of this information, I came to the conclusion in an earlier post that there was “collusion between Tiborcz’s firm and István Papp, CEO of Microsoft Hungary between 2011 and 2015, and Viktor Sagyibó, who was in charge of all sales of Microsoft products to the government.” Microsoft fired both Papp and Sagyibó in the summer of 2017. It is likely that some of the money from the overpriced products ended up in the pockets of both the two Microsoft employees and István Tiborcz.
And that takes me to another development in the business affairs of the extended Orbán family. István Tiborcz’s lighting business venture ended rather abruptly when OLAF, the European Commission’s Anti-Fraud Office, announced that it was going to investigate his company, Elios, which had won tenders for the installment of LED lighting in scores of Hungarian cities. At that time he established a real estate business, hiding behind two friends who were registered as owners. By 2017 he owned eight high-priced pieces of real estate, among them former aristocratic mansions, including a luxurious mansion for his family’s private use. He refused to divulge any details of his business activities until October 2017, when he volunteered to tell all to the government propaganda publication Origo. The reason for his “coming out” was most likely the interest investigative journalists were showing in his secretive financial affairs.
Viktor Orbán with Anikó Lévai and daughters Sara and Ráhel with husbands
Tiborcz, it seems, is no longer making any attempt to hide his family’s fortune. In the process, the pretension that Lőrinc Mészáros’s fortune is exclusively his own and that he is not Orbán’s “stróman” is starting to collapse. We have reached a new era in the financial history of the Orbán family, Hungarian sources claim. Tiborcz announced that he had purchased a 29.59% stake in Appeninn Holding Zrt., in which Mészáros has a 54.95% stake. I suspect that there was no money exchanged here. About 6 billion forints worth of shares simply changed hands. Appeninn is a property management company, so, given Tiborcz’s real estate business, the investment makes sense.
By now, after the two-thirds majority, the Orbán family appears to feel secure enough to show bits and pieces of its riches. “Slowly a dynastic demesne regime is taking shape,” 444.hu pointed out the other day.
The extent of the Orbán’s family wealth is still not known, but it must be substantial. Viktor Orbán has made sure that his eldest daughter and her husband will be able to spend the rest of their lives in luxury, and there are three more daughters and a son to come.