Puch confirmed to Direkt36 that his family owns the boat through their companies. He also said that he personally uses the yacht a few times a year. Puch\u2019s passion for sailing is well known (last year he won in one of the categories of a Balaton sailing competition as part of an 8-member team), but so far it has been unknown that his family\u2019s assets include a valuable sailing boat.<\/p>\n
The lawyer and the wife<\/strong><\/h2>\nValery II is owned by a Croatian company called Sretna Adria Carter d.o.o., which was founded in 2007 by Gyula D\u00e1vid, a former Socialist politician close to Puch. D\u00e1vid was a Socialist member of parliament between 2002 and 2006, and he was a member of the supervisory board of the Socialist Party\u2019s foundation when Puch was the board\u2019s chairman. D\u00e1vid is currently working as a lawyer, and one of his clients is the Austrian company Horizont Handels und Industrie AG, of which Puch is a shareholder. Last year, Puch purchased N\u00e9pszava, an emblematic left-wing newspaper, through this Austrian company.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/ValeryII_01.png\")
<\/a>The boat of Puch’s family marenostrum.hu<\/p><\/div>\n
D\u00e1vid declined to comment, saying that he considers his investments a private matter, and that he withdrew from public life 11 years ago.<\/p>\n
D\u00e1vid sold 75% of his shares in Sretna Adria Carter in 2008 to J\u00e1nos Bazsantik, a businessman who took part in several sailing competitions in the recent years together with Puch. Bazsantik sold his shares in 2014 to a Croatian company called Dallos d.o.o., and this was when the boat became the property of the Puch family.<\/p>\n
95% of Dallos\u2019 shares are owned by a Hungarian company called Halexa, which was founded by Puch\u2019s wife and two daughters. Later, the politician\u2019s son also became a member of the company.<\/p>\n
In a telephone interview, Puch told Direkt36 that the family firm created Dallos d.o.o. in the beginning of 2000s with touristic purposes. They own an apartment building in Dalmatia, he said. In 2014, they took over Sretna Adria Carter through Dallos and together with the company they also purchased Valery II. Puch claimed that he could not say when exactly and for how much Sretna Adria Carter purchased the boat.<\/p>\n
![\"Owners](\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/puch-abra2.en_.jpg\")
<\/a>Owners of Valery II – Source: Direkt36<\/p><\/div>\n
The last time Puch published a wealth declaration was in 2014, before he left the Hungarian parliament. According to the declaration, he personally owned six properties in the Hungarian countryside, one Suzuki car and savings in the amount of 170 million forints (550 thousand euros). The spouses\u2019 assets declarations are not public but Puch said that his wife declared only her interest in Halexa and did not indicate her ownership in the yacht because the declaration rules did not require that.<\/p>\n
A yacht for rent<\/strong><\/h2>\n\u201cOnce in a lifetime one has to see how the sun sinks into the blue shining waves\u201d \u2013 this is the slogan Valery II is advertised for tourists by the company of Sretna Adria Carter\u2019s director. According to company\u2019s site, Valery II can be rented between March and September, the renting fee ranges depending on the period between 2700 and 5000 euros. It can be rented for organized tours, with the boat leaving from the Marina Mandaline port in Sibenik, and then visiting Dalmatian towns (Primosten, Split, Dubrovnik) and various islands. The fee does not cover catering and the services of a captain.<\/p>\n
The webpage presents Valery II in details with photos. It is an \u201cAlliaura Marine Privilege 435\u201d catamaran model, which was built in 2004 and is 13.4-meter long and 7-meter wide. It has four 2-persons cabins, thus it is suitable for the accommodation of eight people. Each cabin has its own bathroom, and the advertisement also highlights that DVD and CD players are also available on the boat.<\/p>\n
An associate of Multiyacht, a company selling yachts, said that based on the available data Valery II can be considered a middle-high class luxury yacht with a current market price of approximately 250-270 thousand euros. The webpage of Yachtworld, one of the biggest distributors of yachts worldwide, offers a 2002 model for 303 thousand euros, and a 2001 model for 242 thousand euros. According to Multiyacht\u2019s associate, the original price of the boat could have been 500-600 thousand euros.<\/p>\n
Puch considers the price of 250-270 thousand euros excessive and recalled that recently they tried to sell the yacht for 170 thousand euros but could not find a buyer. He said that a few times a year he uses the catamaran together with his friends. He added that he also has to pay the renting fee because of company regulations. He also said that he had used the boat even before his wife became a shareholder in the company owning the yacht. \u201cThis is not something new, sailing has been my hobby for a long time\u201d, he said. He added that he has been sailing at the Adriatic Sea since the early 1990s, even during the times of the Croatian war.<\/p>\n
The treasurer<\/strong><\/h2>\nPuch has long been an influential figure in the Hungarian Socialist Party. He became the party\u2019s treasurer after the Socialists fell out of government in the 1998 parliamentary elections. His job was to secure the financial background of the party and proved to be a successful and powerful operator.<\/p>\n
According to some former Socialist party members, such as former prime minister and party chairman Ferenc Gyurcs\u00e1ny, Puch managed to achieve this thanks to a close relationship with Lajos Simicska who played a similar role behind Fidesz, the current governing party. At that time, Puch responded to these speculations by saying that he did not have a direct connection to Simicska, there was only indirect messaging between the two of them.<\/p>\n
He left the post of the party treasurer in 2008. After that, he led the county-level party organization where also his political career started. Last year, he left the post of the county party chair but kept his party membership. Puch again became the centre of attention last December when he announced that he would buy two left-leaning newspapers, N\u00e9pszava, and Vas\u00e1rnapi H\u00edrek, another left-leaning paper.<\/p>\n
L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Tenki provided computer programming assistance to this story. For the Hungarian company data we used the services of Opten<\/a> and C\u00e9ginfo<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nCover photo by Tam\u00e1s Sz\u00e9mann \/ Index<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former treasurer of the Hungarian Socialist party has a luxury yacht in Croatia with estimated market value of 260 thousand euros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-444.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[547,558],"class_list":["post-9618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vagyonnyilatkozatok","author-cap-pufi","author-cap-zsuzsi"],"authors":[{"term_id":547,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-pufi","display_name":"pufi","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""},{"term_id":558,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-zsuzsi","display_name":"Zsuzsi","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\/9618","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\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/a>The boat of Puch’s family marenostrum.hu<\/p><\/div>\n
D\u00e1vid declined to comment, saying that he considers his investments a private matter, and that he withdrew from public life 11 years ago.<\/p>\n
D\u00e1vid sold 75% of his shares in Sretna Adria Carter in 2008 to J\u00e1nos Bazsantik, a businessman who took part in several sailing competitions in the recent years together with Puch. Bazsantik sold his shares in 2014 to a Croatian company called Dallos d.o.o., and this was when the boat became the property of the Puch family.<\/p>\n
95% of Dallos\u2019 shares are owned by a Hungarian company called Halexa, which was founded by Puch\u2019s wife and two daughters. Later, the politician\u2019s son also became a member of the company.<\/p>\n
In a telephone interview, Puch told Direkt36 that the family firm created Dallos d.o.o. in the beginning of 2000s with touristic purposes. They own an apartment building in Dalmatia, he said. In 2014, they took over Sretna Adria Carter through Dallos and together with the company they also purchased Valery II. Puch claimed that he could not say when exactly and for how much Sretna Adria Carter purchased the boat.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Owners of Valery II – Source: Direkt36<\/p><\/div>\n
The last time Puch published a wealth declaration was in 2014, before he left the Hungarian parliament. According to the declaration, he personally owned six properties in the Hungarian countryside, one Suzuki car and savings in the amount of 170 million forints (550 thousand euros). The spouses\u2019 assets declarations are not public but Puch said that his wife declared only her interest in Halexa and did not indicate her ownership in the yacht because the declaration rules did not require that.<\/p>\n
A yacht for rent<\/strong><\/h2>\n\u201cOnce in a lifetime one has to see how the sun sinks into the blue shining waves\u201d \u2013 this is the slogan Valery II is advertised for tourists by the company of Sretna Adria Carter\u2019s director. According to company\u2019s site, Valery II can be rented between March and September, the renting fee ranges depending on the period between 2700 and 5000 euros. It can be rented for organized tours, with the boat leaving from the Marina Mandaline port in Sibenik, and then visiting Dalmatian towns (Primosten, Split, Dubrovnik) and various islands. The fee does not cover catering and the services of a captain.<\/p>\n
The webpage presents Valery II in details with photos. It is an \u201cAlliaura Marine Privilege 435\u201d catamaran model, which was built in 2004 and is 13.4-meter long and 7-meter wide. It has four 2-persons cabins, thus it is suitable for the accommodation of eight people. Each cabin has its own bathroom, and the advertisement also highlights that DVD and CD players are also available on the boat.<\/p>\n
An associate of Multiyacht, a company selling yachts, said that based on the available data Valery II can be considered a middle-high class luxury yacht with a current market price of approximately 250-270 thousand euros. The webpage of Yachtworld, one of the biggest distributors of yachts worldwide, offers a 2002 model for 303 thousand euros, and a 2001 model for 242 thousand euros. According to Multiyacht\u2019s associate, the original price of the boat could have been 500-600 thousand euros.<\/p>\n
Puch considers the price of 250-270 thousand euros excessive and recalled that recently they tried to sell the yacht for 170 thousand euros but could not find a buyer. He said that a few times a year he uses the catamaran together with his friends. He added that he also has to pay the renting fee because of company regulations. He also said that he had used the boat even before his wife became a shareholder in the company owning the yacht. \u201cThis is not something new, sailing has been my hobby for a long time\u201d, he said. He added that he has been sailing at the Adriatic Sea since the early 1990s, even during the times of the Croatian war.<\/p>\n
The treasurer<\/strong><\/h2>\nPuch has long been an influential figure in the Hungarian Socialist Party. He became the party\u2019s treasurer after the Socialists fell out of government in the 1998 parliamentary elections. His job was to secure the financial background of the party and proved to be a successful and powerful operator.<\/p>\n
According to some former Socialist party members, such as former prime minister and party chairman Ferenc Gyurcs\u00e1ny, Puch managed to achieve this thanks to a close relationship with Lajos Simicska who played a similar role behind Fidesz, the current governing party. At that time, Puch responded to these speculations by saying that he did not have a direct connection to Simicska, there was only indirect messaging between the two of them.<\/p>\n
He left the post of the party treasurer in 2008. After that, he led the county-level party organization where also his political career started. Last year, he left the post of the county party chair but kept his party membership. Puch again became the centre of attention last December when he announced that he would buy two left-leaning newspapers, N\u00e9pszava, and Vas\u00e1rnapi H\u00edrek, another left-leaning paper.<\/p>\n
L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Tenki provided computer programming assistance to this story. For the Hungarian company data we used the services of Opten<\/a> and C\u00e9ginfo<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nCover photo by Tam\u00e1s Sz\u00e9mann \/ Index<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former treasurer of the Hungarian Socialist party has a luxury yacht in Croatia with estimated market value of 260 thousand euros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-444.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[547,558],"class_list":["post-9618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vagyonnyilatkozatok","author-cap-pufi","author-cap-zsuzsi"],"authors":[{"term_id":547,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-pufi","display_name":"pufi","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""},{"term_id":558,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-zsuzsi","display_name":"Zsuzsi","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\/9618","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\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Puch has long been an influential figure in the Hungarian Socialist Party. He became the party\u2019s treasurer after the Socialists fell out of government in the 1998 parliamentary elections. His job was to secure the financial background of the party and proved to be a successful and powerful operator.<\/p>\n
According to some former Socialist party members, such as former prime minister and party chairman Ferenc Gyurcs\u00e1ny, Puch managed to achieve this thanks to a close relationship with Lajos Simicska who played a similar role behind Fidesz, the current governing party. At that time, Puch responded to these speculations by saying that he did not have a direct connection to Simicska, there was only indirect messaging between the two of them.<\/p>\n
He left the post of the party treasurer in 2008. After that, he led the county-level party organization where also his political career started. Last year, he left the post of the county party chair but kept his party membership. Puch again became the centre of attention last December when he announced that he would buy two left-leaning newspapers, N\u00e9pszava, and Vas\u00e1rnapi H\u00edrek, another left-leaning paper.<\/p>\n
L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Tenki provided computer programming assistance to this story. For the Hungarian company data we used the services of Opten<\/a> and C\u00e9ginfo<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Cover photo by Tam\u00e1s Sz\u00e9mann \/ Index<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former treasurer of the Hungarian Socialist party has a luxury yacht in Croatia with estimated market value of 260 thousand euros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-444.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[547,558],"class_list":["post-9618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vagyonnyilatkozatok","author-cap-pufi","author-cap-zsuzsi"],"authors":[{"term_id":547,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-pufi","display_name":"pufi","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""},{"term_id":558,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-zsuzsi","display_name":"Zsuzsi","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\/9618","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\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9618"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}