{"id":2674,"date":"2017-01-04T11:40:08","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T10:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=2674"},"modified":"2022-10-11T23:21:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T21:21:28","slug":"tiborcz-istvan-offshore-cegnek-adta-tovabb-milliardot-ero-ingatlanvallalkozasat-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/tiborcz-istvan-offshore-cegnek-adta-tovabb-milliardot-ero-ingatlanvallalkozasat-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime minister\u2019s son-in-law sold his property business to an offshore company"},"content":{"rendered":"

Istv\u00e1n Tiborcz, son-in-law of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, did not stay for long in the company with which he came close to state projects. Tiborcz became a majority owner of WHB Ingatlan, a property company, last August<\/a> but he sold his shares two months later to Synergy Global Consulting Limited, an offshore company registered on the British Virgin Islands, records show.<\/p>\n

Due to the secret nature of offshore companies, it is not known who the owners of Synergy Global Consulting are. Tiborcz could not be reached and the director of WHB Ingatlan declined to provide details on the new owners, citing business confidentiality.<\/p>\n

WHB Ingatlan had purchased a 13,000 square meter plot of land containing a factory<\/a> in the city of Komarom in March 2016, according to land and company records.<\/p>\n

WHB Ingatlan did not disclose how much it paid for the property, formerly a factory supplying Finnish telecommunications company Nokia. But the company that it bought the property from, Perlos, had previously listed its value as \u20ac3.28 million (US$ 3.47 million), according to company records.<\/p>\n

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Factories for Perlos and Nokia previously on the land in Komarom had shut down between 2009 in 2014, prompting the government to step in to seek new investors. Then State Minister Peter Szijjarto, who is now Hungary\u2019s foreign minister, instructed the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency to accelerate talks with any company planning to invest in Komarom. Since then, two factories have already been set up on the site.<\/p>\n

With the purchase of WHB Ingatlan, Istv\u00e1n Tiborcz drew attention again to his business activities and his ties to state projects. Previously, he had been the owner of a company that won public tenders under controversial circumstances. Tiborcz later sold his shares in the company, reportedly because he wanted to avoid being attacked for his business activities.<\/p>\n

Offshore companies, which are often registered in exotic countries, are used in general for two purposes. One of them is for minimizing the tax burden on income that a company or a person makes in other countries. Since the ownership data of these entities are in most cases very hard to access, these companies are also used for hiding assets or conducting shady businesses.<\/p>\n

It is because of these two characteristics that even though owning or using offshore companies is legal there have been major international efforts to crack down on their use.<\/p>\n

Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s party, Fidesz, has also been criticizing heavily public figures having deals with offshore companies. In the 2010 campaign, which brought back Fidesz to power, they called these figures \u201coffshore knights.\u201d At the time, Orb\u00e1n led these attacks by saying that \u201deverybody feels that it is not okay\u201d to use offshore companies. Orb\u00e1n also promised to end the \u201dage of offshore knights.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Istv\u00e1n Tiborcz\u2019s former company owns a high value property in an industrial park that is promoted by the government to investors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[440],"class_list":["post-2674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-az-orban-csalad-uzletei","author-petho-andras"],"authors":[{"term_id":440,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"petho-andras","display_name":"Andr\u00e1s Peth\u0151","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/av_Peto_Andras.png","url2x":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/av_Peto_Andras.png"},"description":"[:hu]Andr\u00e1s a Direkt36 egyik alap\u00edt\u00f3ja, szerkeszt\u0151je \u00e9s \u00fcgyvezet\u0151 igazgat\u00f3ja. Kor\u00e1bban az Origo vezet\u0151 szerkeszt\u0151je volt, miel\u0151tt a port\u00e1l r\u00e9sze lett a korm\u00e1ny propagandag\u00e9pezet\u00e9nek. Andr\u00e1s dolgozott a BBC World Service-n\u00e9l Londonban \u00e9s a Washington Post t\u00e9nyfelt\u00e1r\u00f3 rovat\u00e1n\u00e1l is. R\u00e9szt vett sz\u00e1mos nagy nemzetk\u00f6zi nyomoz\u00f3 projektben, k\u00f6zt\u00fck a Panama-iratok feldolgoz\u00e1s\u00e1ban. K\u00e9tszer is elnyerte a legjobbnak \u00edt\u00e9lt t\u00e9nyfelt\u00e1r\u00f3 cikkek szerz\u0151inek j\u00e1r\u00f3 Soma-d\u00edjat. T\u00f6bbsz\u00f6r tanult \u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjjal az Egyes\u00fclt \u00c1llamokban: 2008-ban a World Press Institute programj\u00e1ban, 2012-13-ban Humphrey-\u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjask\u00e9nt a Marylandi Egyetemen, 2019-20-ban pedig Nieman-\u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjask\u00e9nt a Harvard Egyetemen. Andr\u00e1s t\u00f6bb magyar egyetemen is tan\u00edtott \u00fajs\u00e1g\u00edr\u00f3 kurzusokat.\r\n[:en]Andr\u00e1s is a co-founder, editor and executive director of Direkt36. Previously, he was a senior editor for leading Hungarian news site Origo before it had been transformed into the government\u2019s propaganda outlet. He also worked for the BBC World Service in London and was a reporter at the investigative unit of The Washington Post. He has contributed to several international reporting projects, including The Panama Papers. He twice won the Soma Prize, the prestigious annual award dedicated to investigative journalism in Hungary. He was a World Press Institute fellow in 2008, a Humphrey fellow at the University of Maryland in 2012\/13, and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2019\/20. Andr\u00e1s has taught journalism courses at Hungarian universities.[:]","first_name":"Andr\u00e1s","last_name":"Peth\u0151","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9207,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674\/revisions\/9207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2674"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}