{"id":5086,"date":"2019-01-09T16:40:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T15:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=5086"},"modified":"2022-10-11T22:58:30","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T20:58:30","slug":"egy-elegans-duna-parti-lakas-es-romaniai-foldek-maradtak-lathatatlanok-banki-erik-vagyonnyilatkozataban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/egy-elegans-duna-parti-lakas-es-romaniai-foldek-maradtak-lathatatlanok-banki-erik-vagyonnyilatkozataban\/","title":{"rendered":"Elegant flat beside the Danube and Romanian lands remained invisible in Hungarian legislator\u2019s asset declaration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here everybody \u201ecan live while recreating,\u201d boasts the advertisement of Roman Wellness Home, a gated community in the north of Budapest, far away from the noise of the city, overlooking the Danube River. The tenants of the \u201cfull-comfort holiday apartments\u201d can enjoy the community\u2019s outdoor swimming pool, garden grill, playground and fitness centre.<\/p>\n

Erik B\u00e1nki, a senior member of Hungary\u2019s governing Fidesz party had owned for years a 133-square-meters apartment here. The flat never appeared in B\u00e1nki\u2019s asset declarations, although he told Direkt36 that he currently \u201chalfway\u201d lives in the Roman Wellness Home. Neither did he list in his asset declarations over 100 hectares of land in Romania owned through his companies, nor \u20ac2.3 million of debt accumulated by his businesses.<\/p>\n

B\u00e1nki told Direkt36 that he did not list the real estate in his asset declarations because they were owned by his companies, not by him personally. \u201cThe assets of a company and private ownership are different things,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the real estate is owned by a company, it is not owned by a private person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hungarian law requires parliamentarians to file annual asset statements to give a full picture of their financial situation. The Hungarian law, however, does not clearly spell out whether parliamentarians must declare only directly owned assets, or also assets owned through companies. Many parliamentarians \u2013 although not all of them, as our earlier examples showed\u00a0<\/a> – use this loophole. This way, they do not violate the law, but they contribute to turning the asset declaration system meaningless.<\/p>\n

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Real estate behind companies<\/h3>\n

In 2015, \u00c1tl\u00e1tsz\u00f3 reported<\/a> that one of B\u00e1nki\u2019s advertisement companies was registered in a \u201eluxurious gated community\u201d, in a flat that was owned by a company of B\u00e1nki\u2019s wife.\u00a0 However, B\u00e1nki had already appeared in the gated community in 2009.<\/p>\n

According to his asset declaration filed in 2008, B\u00e1nki at the time only co-owned to houses in a village called \u00dcr\u00f6m: he had 50% of a 95-square-meter, and 20% of a 47-square-meter house. The bigger house disappeared from B\u00e1nki\u2019s declaration by 2009.<\/p>\n

However, in the summer of the same year, B\u00e1nki and his wife became the owners of B6-Home Kft. through a big capital raise. They paid a total of 96,08 million forints (352,8 thousand euros) into the company that had a capital of 3 million forints (11 thousand euros) and listed among its assets the 133-square-meter flat in Roman Wellness Home. After the capital raise, they also bought the shares of the previous owner, so B\u00e1nki and his wife became the sole owners of the company, and also the company\u2019s flat.<\/p>\n

\"\"

One of the houses in the Roman Wellness Home gated community. \/ Photo:Direkt36<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2010, B\u00e1nki\u2019s wife also obtained to additional flats in another building of the same gated community. Judging from the numbering, the 93- and the 72-square-metre flats are located next to each other, on the third floor of the building. \u00c1gnes B\u00e1nki does not own these flats personally, but through companies (A231 Kft, then B6 Rent Kft) in her 100% ownership.<\/p>\n

The B\u00e1nkis sold B6-Home Kft. \u2013 together with the flat owned by the\u00a0company \u2013 in 2012 but did not get far away from the gated community: B\u00e1nki\u2019s wife remained the indirect owner (through B6 Rent) of the two other flats. Currently one of these flats serves as the registered address of two of B\u00e1nki\u2019s companies, and his wife regularly posts family pictures from a dining room of a flat that is located in the gated community (the last one featuring B\u00e1nki was published in November 2016).<\/p>\n

We asked B\u00e1nki whether he currently lives in the Roman Wellness Home gated community. \u201eHalfway\u201d \u2013 he said, adding that he spends 2-3 days a week in Moh\u00e1cs and P\u00e9cs, in his old constituency in Southern Hungary.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know whether the Roman Wellness Home flats appear in the asset declarations of B\u00e1nki\u2019s wife, as spouses\u2019 declarations are not public. In his last asset declaration, B\u00e1nki only listed the 20% of a 47-square-meter flat as his asset. According to him, he did not have to declare the flat in the gated community, as it was earlier owned by his company, and not personally by him.<\/p>\n

Romanian land also remained invisible<\/h3>\n

As we reported earlier,<\/a> B\u00e1nki gave a similar explanation for not having declared over 100 hectares of land bought by his companies in Romania and \u20ac2.3 million of debt accumulated by them.<\/p>\n

Besides, B\u00e1nki also left out two Romanian companies from his asset declarations. One was owned through another company, this is why he did not list it. The other one, Apsa Real Estate Srl. was 50% owned by B\u00e1nki between 2007 and 2011. B\u00e1nki told Direkt36 that the company did not have any meaningful activities, and he simply forgot to include it in his asset declarations.<\/p>\n

Cover photo: Tam\u00e1s Botos, 444.hu<\/em>
\n For Hungarian company data, we used the services of Opten<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erik B\u00e1nki said that he currently \u201chalfway\u201d lives in the elegant Roman Wellness Home gated community, although there is no sign of this in his asset declarations. He did not declare the flat and over 100 hectares of land in Romania because they were owned by his companies, not by him personally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[53,147,291,292,342],"ppma_author":[442],"class_list":["post-5086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vagyonnyilatkozatok","tag-banki-erik","tag-ingatlan","tag-romai-wellness-home","tag-romaifurdo","tag-vagyonnyilatkozat","author-zoldi-blanka"],"authors":[{"term_id":442,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"zoldi-blanka","display_name":"Z\u00f6ldi Blanka","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/684e70743cf3adb3b450953347ee749a3050328c83a76b5079f4a535985d3395?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"Blanka","last_name":"Z\u00f6ldi","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9290,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions\/9290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5086"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}