An unprecedented massive leak of offshore documents revealed that Horv\u00e1th has had hidden companies. He is the only Hungarian politician who is personally implicated in the leak. The documents were obtained by the German newspaper S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung and more than 370 journalists from 76 countries worked on it in a yearlong investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.<\/p>\n
From Hungary, Direkt36 was the only journalism organization participating in the project. The documents contain several dozens of Hungarian individuals with offshore interests. In the next few days and weeks we will publish articles about the most significant findings.<\/p>\n
First we are telling Horv\u00e1th\u2019s story, who has been involved in two offshore companies. (Fidesz had two MPs with the name of Zsolt Horv\u00e1th. This story is about the one who represented Kecskem\u00e9t, a rural city. The other was representing Veszpr\u00e9m.)<\/p>\n
The key findings of the story in less than a minute<\/em><\/p>\n [vimeo id=”161359859″]<\/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 acccess, these companies are also used for hiding assets or conducting shady businesses. 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 Horv\u00e1th\u2019s offshore interests have also been hidden until now. When Direkt36 called him on the phone four weeks ago and asked him about his foreign business interests he claimed that he had no such activities. When we told him concrete names of companies he first asked \u201cwhat do you want to know about them?\u201d Then he repeatedly claimed that he had no such companies. Finally, he asked us to send him questions by email. He has not responded to these inquiries and did not take calls or respond to repeated messages either.<\/p>\n By law, Hungarian individuals should declare to the Hungarian tax authorities any income they make in other countries. Among the questions Horv\u00e1th failed to answer was whether he had such income from the Seychelles companies and if he reported it to the tax agency.<\/p>\n Horv\u00e1th, who, according to his biographies and wealth declarations, had neither savings nor involvement in serious business activities, appeared in a Seychelles-based company in October 2013 as a director. At that time he was still a member of the National Assembly and he should have declared this position in his wealth declaration but he failed to do it. A few months after he had left parliament in May 2014, he became a shareholder in another Seychelles company.<\/p>\n According to the leaked documents, both Seychelles companies\u2019 activities are creating and trading toys. The papers do not contain specifics about the toys but Horv\u00e1th had got involved in developing and selling a relatively new toy a few months before his parliamentary mandate ended. Since both Horv\u00e1th and his business partner refused to answer Direkt36\u2019s questions it is not clear whether the Seychelles companies have anything to do with the Hungarian toy development.<\/p>\n Horv\u00e1th\u2019s involvement with offshore companies can be embarrassing for his party. Fidesz has been criticizing heavily public figures having offshore companies. In the 2010 campaign, which brought back Fidesz to power, they called these figures \u201coffshore knights.\u201d At the time, party leader Viktor Orb\u00e1n, now the country\u2019s prime minister, 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>\n [vimeo id=”158802467″ align=”center”]<\/p>\n The leaked documents come from a little-known but powerful law firm based in Panama, Mossack Fonseca that has branches around the world.<\/p>\n The firm is one of the world\u2019s top creators of shell companies, corporate structures that can be used to hide ownership of assets. The law firm\u2019s leaked internal files contain information on 214,488 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and regions.<\/p>\n Although this is not the first time that offshore documents are leaked, the scale of this one is unprecedented. The leak contains 11.5 million records, including e-mails, financial reports, passports and other company files.<\/p>\n Zsolt Horv\u00e1th is one of the 140 individuals identified in the documents as current or former politicians and public officials. Horv\u00e1th joined Fidesz in 1989 and was one of its representatives in parliament from 1998 to 2014. He has a medical degree and had been a practising dentist before devoting most of his time to politics. In 2000 and 2001, in the first Orb\u00e1n government, he was a state secretary in charge in the Ministry of Healthcare. He was in this position for less than a year.<\/p>\n A portrait of Zsolt Horv\u00e1th and a picture together with Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n – Source: Fidesz.hu<\/p><\/div>\n In Orb\u00e1n\u2019s second government, he did not get such a senior position. He was appointed only as a healthcare commissioner in November 2012 and his position was terminated a year later. He rose to speak in the parliament only occasionally and did not have many public appearances. \u201cHe was quiet in the meetings of the parliamentary group,\u201d recalled one of his former fellow MP.<\/p>\n Horv\u00e1th\u2019s offshore involvement exposed by the leaked documents began in his last years in the parliament. In October 2013, he was appointed as a director in a Seychelles company called Excelle Media International. The leaked files do not reveal the owners of the company. The papers show only a nominal shareholder of Excelle, a firm linked to a Hong Kong based consultancy company. The firm did not respond to Direkt36\u2019s questions.<\/p>\n Excelle Media took quick steps to start operating as a normal company. Two days after Horv\u00e1th had become a director, the firm initiated to open a bank account at HSBC, one of the world\u2019s biggest banks. It is not clear from the files whether the account was actually opened but another record shows that Horv\u00e1th\u2019s passport was verified in a London branch of HSBC. We asked Horv\u00e1th several questions about the bank account but he did not answer any of them.<\/p>\n At the time of his appointment at Excelle Media, Horv\u00e1th was still a member of parliament. He should have declared this position in his wealth declaration but he failed to do it. Filing a declaration is obligatory but nobody in the parliament verifies the content of the documents, except if the declarations are challenged by someone who has credible information that a declaration is false.<\/p>\n In the 2014, Horv\u00e1th was not among the candidates of Fidesz. According to another former Fidesz MP, Horv\u00e1th dropped out because his position had weakened in his hometown, Kecskem\u00e9t,. \u201cHe lost his influence and got forced out,\u201d said the politician.<\/p>\n Horv\u00e1th gave a similar explanation about his departure from politics to a local news site. \u201cSome young people came who were hungry, and not only in the parliament but also in enforcing their interests. Thank God, I had enough experience to recognize this and decided to step back,\u201d Horv\u00e1th told H\u00edr\u00f6sv\u00e9ny in February 2014.<\/p>\n He also said in the interview that he only had vague ideas on what he would be doing after leaving the parliament. The leaked documents show, however, that he became a shareholder of another Seychelles company, Mayer & Collins Trading Company just a few months later, in September 2014.<\/p>\n According to the records, the activity of both Excelle Media and Mayer & Collins is creating and trading toys. The documents also show that the companies conduct these activities in China, Hong Kong (which is also part of China), and Hungary.<\/p>\n The files do not reveal specifics about the toys but Horv\u00e1th got involved in the developing and selling of a Hungarian product called Smart Egg just when his tenure in parliament was about to end. The egg shaped toy has a labyrinth inside and the players need to find a way out of this with a wand. The toy was invented by Andr\u00e1s Zagyvai, a Hungarian architect, in 2007. He won the World Puzzle Championship Grand Prix Award in Washington with it in 2012. Zagyvai died in 2013.<\/p>\n In February 2014, Horv\u00e1th became a co-owner of two Hungarian companies (Art Egg Kft. and Art & Smart Egg Kft.) that are both dealing with the toy. His parliamentary mandate ended in May but he already gave two interviews about the product for the state television channel in April. Horv\u00e1th said that abroad the Smart Egg is mentioned as the next Rubik cube and he hoped that it would be just as successful. He added, though, that \u201cthis is very difficult because the Rubik cube is the etalon.\u201d<\/p>\n The Smart Egg is available in some of the world\u2019s biggest stores \u2013 like in Toys R Us or in Amazon -, and a digital version also was developed for mobile phones and tablets. According to its website, the toy is marketed by a Hong Kong based company. Information on the firm\u2019s ownership is not available but a company presentation available online, lists a Hungarian individual, Imre K\u00f6k\u00e9nyesi, as the contact person.<\/p>\n According to his LinkedIn profile, K\u00f6k\u00e9nyesi has been working for most of his career on children products. He has also been involved in the development of Smart Egg in recent years. In 2012, he and Zagyvai gave an interview to 168 \u00d3ra, a magazine, and K\u00f6k\u00e9nyesi said that the worldwide marketing of the product will require significant investment.<\/p>\n \u201cMy estimation is that only the patent process would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,\u201d said K\u00f6k\u00e9nyesi. He added that promoting the product would take millions of dollars. Zagyvai suggested that he had limited financial resources for that. K\u00f6k\u00e9nyesi did not say anything about how they might get the necessary investment.<\/p>\n K\u00f6k\u00e9nyesi also refused to answer our questions, even though he probably knew details about Horv\u00e1th\u2019s offshore interests as well. According to the leaked records, K\u00f6k\u00e9nyesi is also involved in the Seychelles companies. He was appointed as the director of Excelle Media alongside Horv\u00e1th and he owns the other half of the shares in Mayer & Collins.<\/p>\n Each of them owns shares worth of 50 thousand dollars in Mayer & Collins. Horv\u00e1th failed to answer the questions on how much he paid for the shares and about his potential personal investment in the costly Smart Egg project. His wealth declarations suggest that he did not have much extra resource for either of this. He ended his career as an MP with no savings and 14 million forints (50 thousand dollars in debt.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Millions of leaked offshore documents reveal the hidden businesses and assets of world leaders and politicians, including a former MP of Hungary’s governing party. He got involved in a secret offshore company while he was still in parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-444.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[522],"class_list":["post-9580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-offshore-secrets","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\/9580","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=9580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9580"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Support Direkt36, invest in democracy!<\/a><\/h4>\n
What are these documents?<\/h3>\n
A quiet politician<\/h3>\n
![\"Source:](\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Horva\u0301th_Zsolt_Monta\u0301zs.jpg\")
<\/a>Then came the young<\/h3>\n
Horv\u00e1th and the Smart Egg<\/h3>\n
Serious investments<\/h3>\n
Become a supporting member of Direkt36 now!<\/a><\/h3>\n