{"id":9577,"date":"2016-03-11T14:01:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T13:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=1657"},"modified":"2016-03-11T14:01:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T13:01:18","slug":"hogyan-nott-ossze-a-belvarosi-korrupcios-ugy-ket-foszereploje-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/hogyan-nott-ossze-a-belvarosi-korrupcios-ugy-ket-foszereploje-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hogyan n\u0151tt \u00f6ssze a belv\u00e1rosi korrupci\u00f3s \u00fcgy k\u00e9t f\u0151szerepl\u0151je?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

One man is an entrepreneur, the other is a public official. One went to a vocational school, the other has a law degree. One is sporty and elegant, the other looks older than his age.<\/p>\n

The two men seemingly do not have anything in common, still they have had a very close relationship for years. They say that they spoke by phone on a daily basis and had lunch or coffee once a week. One even gave advice to the other on buying suits.<\/p>\n

What might explain their close connection despite the differences in character is one thing: District 5 of Budapest, one of the richest and most important municipalities in the capital. J\u00e1nos Borzov\u00e1n, the entrepreneur, was active in the district through his construction company, getting several valuable contracts from the municipality while the lawyer named L\u00e1szl\u00f3 R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki was serving as the district\u2019s notary.<\/p>\n

Now there is one more thing that links the two. Both of them are defendants in the corruption trial that started at the Court of Budapest on Thursday. Borzov\u00e1n is charged of asking money for influencing official procedures of the municipality. According to the prosecutors, he was cooperating in this with R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki. The third defendant, a restaurant owner, is charged of giving money to Borzov\u00e1n so that he help him obtaining a licence from the municipality.<\/p>\n

All three men are denying the charges.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

Zizi Bar\u2019s licence<\/h2>\n

The prosecutor\u2019s office claims that Borzov\u00e1n and R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki committed crimes regarding two separate legal procedures. Direkt36 covered extensively the one that was revolving around obtaining a restaurant licence<\/a>. According to the prosecutors, Borzov\u00e1n asked 1.5 million HUF (4800 euros) from a then co-owner of a place called Zizi Bar in return for arranging a license needed for longer opening hours.<\/p>\n

According to the charges, a few days after the phone conversation with the restaurant owner, Borzov\u00e1n indeed spoke with R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki about the license application. Another couple of days later, a colleague of the restaurant owner took the money to the place previously agreed upon, a downtown hotel that, according to the prosecutors, belongs to Borzov\u00e1n\u2019s business interests. The next day, the local government acknowledged the license application and registered the restaurant\u2019s late-night opening hours.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor\u2019s case is based partly on secretly tapped phone conversations. Borzov\u00e1n claims, however, that the prosecutors misinterpreted what happened. He acknowledged that he got 1.5 million forints from the restaurant owner but he claims that this money was in return for a construction work he arranged for Zizi Bar. He added that no invoice was issued because they had an informal agreement with the restaurant owner and that is why the work is not included in neither company\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

Borzov\u00e1n acknowledged that he had known about the pending licence of Zizi Bar. He also admitted that he talked about it with R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki but he claimed that the money from the restaurant owner had nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n

The importance of Borzov\u00e1n\u2019s image<\/h2>\n

The rest of the charges involve a real estate deal. Prosecutor Zolt\u00e1n Andr\u00e9ka said that a company sold a property in District 5 in July 2012 but the new owner could not be registered in the land records as long as the municipality did not waive its right to buy the property. Due to the summer break, the municipality made this decision only in September but those involved in the real estate deal had to wait even longer. They needed an official copy of the resolution in order to proceed with the land records registration.<\/p>\n

It was then that one of the intermediaries involved in the real estate deal contacted Borzov\u00e1n and, according to the charges, asked him to help them get the resolution. The prosecutor said that Borzov\u00e1n agreed to do this and turned to R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki. According to the charges, Borzov\u00e1n wanted to make sure that it would be clear for the intermediary that it was he who arranged the resolution\u2019s issuance. The prosecutor said that this was important for Borzov\u00e1n because he wanted to cultivate the image that he is a person who can arrange official matters at the municipality.<\/p>\n

According to the charges, Borzov\u00e1n asked 500 thousand HUF (1.600 euros) from the intermediary but he refused to pay. The resolution was eventually issued in the middle of October, a month after the decision was made.<\/p>\n

At the hearing, Borzov\u00e1n claimed that he prosecutors\u2019 charges are baseless in this case, too. He said that he was in contact with the intermediary, a real estate dealer, because he wanted to sell one of his properties. He acknowledged that he became familiar with the matter of the resolution. He also said that he discussed it with R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki but he did it only to selflessly help the real estate dealer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spoke often and on various topics. I may have asked him about this too,\u201d said Borzov\u00e1n, who was described by the prosecutor as someone with a wide network of contacts in District 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t chill out too much\u201d<\/h2>\n

For years, Borzov\u00e1n was a major player in the district\u2019s construction business. Between 2000 and 2010, Borzov\u00e1n\u2019s company, BAU Holding 2000 Ltd., received contracts from the 5th district \u2013 often as member of consortia \u2013 totalling 6.5 billion HUF (20.6 million euros), procurement records show. Data analysis provided by the CEU Microdata research group shows that no other company won more from the local government in this period.<\/p>\n

After 2011, the total revenues of J\u00e1nos Borzov\u00e1n\u2019s companies started to fall, and they also received less work from the 5th District. At the same time, a new company, EU-Line, came to be a close partner of the municipality in construction works. Direkt36 showed in a previous article<\/a> that there are several indirect links between EU-Line and J\u00e1nos Borzov\u00e1n but he claims that he had nothing to do with the company\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n

The corruption trial made it clear that Borzov\u00e1n\u2019s business activity might have faded in District 5 but his connection with the notary remained strong. Apart from talking on a daily basis, Borzov\u00e1n also did favors for R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki. He arranged, for example, that the apartment of R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki\u2019s daughter got renovated at a discount price. R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki did not remember clearly when this happened but he said that it must have been sometime in 2013.<\/p>\n

Borzov\u00e1n also helped R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki when the notary needed new suits. He connected R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki with one of his friends, who was selling suits imported from abroad. Borzov\u00e1n said that R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki paid for what he bought he only helped with connecting the two people.<\/p>\n

The tapped phone conversations suggest that Borzov\u00e1n and R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki had a very informal relationship. In a call cited at the trial, Borzov\u00e1n told R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki that \u201che shouldn\u2019t chill out too much.\u201d Borzov\u00e1n later told the investigators that he does not remember why he said this but added that he had a very good relationship with the notary so \u201cwe could afford to say things like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The notary remembers differently<\/h2>\n

Thursday\u2019s hearing revealed, in addition to the close relationship between Borzov\u00e1n and R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki, some new details regarding the municipality as well.<\/p>\n

Antal Rog\u00e1n, the district\u2019s former mayor and now a government minister, earlier said that R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki was forced out of his job in 2013 because of lack of trust. In a 2015 interview with Index, Rog\u00e1n also suggested that he initiated R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki\u2019s dismissal. However, in a confession read out at the hearing, R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki claimed that it was his decision to leave and formally he left under mutual agreement. He also revealed that his connection with the municipality did not end with his departure. He kept working for the district as a consultant at a company owned by the municipality.<\/p>\n

\u201eWhat should be known about this is that there was an interim period when my experience and advice was needed for the ongoing matters,\u201d said R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki. He added that he worked for the municipality company for a few months.<\/p>\n

Currently, R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki works for another municipality in Budapest, the mayoral office of District 7. He is responsible for ethnic issues there and earns a monthly net salary of 270 thousand HUF (870 euros), R\u00f3nasz\u00e9ki\u00a0said in response to the judge\u2019s questions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The trial of the alleged District 5 corruption cases has started with the testimonies of the defendants. What emerged is a story of how a businessman with a wide network of contacts built an extremely close relationship with one of the most senior public officials of the district.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-444.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[522],"class_list":["post-9577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belvarosi-milliardok","author-cap-andraspetho"],"authors":[{"term_id":522,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-andraspetho","display_name":"AndrasPetho","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9577","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=9577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9577"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}