{"id":9741,"date":"2019-11-20T14:23:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T13:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=5853"},"modified":"2019-11-20T14:23:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T13:23:29","slug":"egyre-szorosabb-a-kapocs-orban-testvere-es-az-allami-palyazatokon-tarolo-vallalkozo-kozott-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/egyre-szorosabb-a-kapocs-orban-testvere-es-az-allami-palyazatokon-tarolo-vallalkozo-kozott-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Egyre szorosabb a kapocs Orb\u00e1n testv\u00e9re \u00e9s az \u00e1llami p\u00e1ly\u00e1zatokon tarol\u00f3 v\u00e1llalkoz\u00f3 k\u00f6z\u00f6tt"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have already been clear signs that one of Viktor Orb\u00e1n’s brothers, Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr., has been in close contact with an entrepreneur whose IT company group keeps winning public tenders. As Direkt36 had previously revealed,<\/a> the relationship between the prime minister’s brother and G\u00e1bor Szentgy\u00f6rgyi is linked to wrestling. Last year, they also watched a football match together, a few steps away from Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"

G\u00e1bor Szentgy\u00f6rgyi, second from the right. Photo: Tamas Botos\/444<\/p><\/div>\n

Since then, their relationship has become even tighter. This spring, one of the business interests of Szentgy\u00f6rgy registered a branch on a property belonging to the Orb\u00e1n family. In this company, one of the business partners of Szentgy\u00f6rgyi is Viktor Kov\u00e1cs, the son-in-law of Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orban Jr. In addition, Kov\u00e1cs also started to work as an employee at the IT company group of Szentgy\u00f6rgy.<\/p>\n

Szentgy\u00f6rgyi\u2019s business group has produced a spectacular growth in recent years. The group\u2019s best performing company is IMG Solution Kft., whose revenues grew from only 46 million HUF (137 thousand EUR) in 2012 to 9.5 billion HUF (18.4 million EUR) last year, even though it did not even have a functioning website until recently.<\/p>\n

The company managed to accomplish this result after winning a series of lucrative state tenders. Direkt36 has obtained previously unpublished public procurement data, which show that IMG Solution has been outstanding among other companies that participated in major IT and office technology tenders.<\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, the business empire of Szentgy\u00f6rgy has expanded to include more companies, and his business interests participate in several large public procurement programs that are currently under way. For example, IMG Solution is part of ten major framework agreements that last for years.<\/p>\n

Direkt36 contacted every player in this story but none of them responded to our questions.<\/p>\n

The link in Hah\u00f3t<\/h2>\n

The industrial site of Hah\u00f3t T\u0151zeg Kft. can only be approached on a dirt road, on the outskirts of Hah\u00f3t, a small village in Zala county. It extracts peat, which is mainly used for heating. The company is part of the business group of the Orb\u00e1n family, owned by the prime minister’s 75-year-old mother and one of his brothers, Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr.<\/p>\n

According to company records and land registry data, this company also owns the land where its factory located. This April, however, another company also registered a branch on the same property: it is Graneos G\u00e9pgy\u00e1rt\u00f3 Kft. Its headquarters is in a town called Veszpr\u00e9m, 100 kilometers away from its branch in Hah\u00f3t. (Companies usually set up a branch if they carry out business activities at a location farther away from their headquarters.)<\/p>\n

Although it is unclear what activities Graneos carries out in Hah\u00f3t its appearance on the location is remarkable, as Graneos is indirectly owned by G\u00e1bor Szentgy\u00f6rgyi, whose business interests have won a number of high-value public tenders in recent years.<\/p>\n

It has already been revealed that Szentgy\u00f6rgyi and Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr. know each other. However, until now it seemed that their relationship is only linked to wrestling: as Direkt36 exposed earlier, the two men both wrestled, and they both participated in the work of a wrestling association.<\/p>\n

However, the plant in Hah\u00f3t is the first link that is connected to their business activities. In order to operate the branch in Hah\u00f3t, Graneos had to obtain a permit from the Orb\u00e1n-company. According to company records, the director of Hah\u00f3t T\u0151zeg Kft. has agreed to allow Graneos to operate its branch on the property for free.<\/p>\n

The marriage<\/h2>\n

Judging from its name, Graneos manufactures machines. It has been operating for just over two years and has not generated any revenue so far. The company, however, points to another, personal relationship between Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr. and G\u00e1bor Szentgy\u00f6rgyi. One of the owners of Graneos is the energy company Energ\u00e9p Kft., which is owned by three individuals. The majority owner is Szentgy\u00f6rgyi, while one of the two minority owners is the 27-year-old Viktor L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kov\u00e1cs.<\/p>\n

Kov\u00e1cs is tightly connected to the Orb\u00e1n family: he is the son-in-law of Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr. According to Facebook photos, he married the daughter of Gy\u0151r\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr. in 2015. Viktor Orb\u00e1n also attended their wedding.<\/p>\n

Kov\u00e1cs, a former professional ice hockey player, is not only a business partner of G\u00e1bor Szentgy\u00f6rgyi. According to a source familiar with Szentgy\u00f6rgyi’s businesses, Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n\u2019s son-in-law joined Szentgy\u00f6rgyi\u2019s group as an employee. The source said that Kov\u00e1cs started working there in early 2018, seemingly without any experience in the field. \u201cHe had to be taught, he knew very little. He was not competent at all in IT and office technology,\u201d the source explained, adding that, at the beginning, his colleagues tried to be discreet about Kov\u00e1cs\u2019 attachment to the Orb\u00e1n family, but that didn’t last long. \u201cAs he [Kov\u00e1cs] added half the company on Facebook a day after he started working there, it quickly became public. On Facebook, it could clearly be seen who his wife was,\u201d the source explained.<\/p>\n

When we contacted Szentgy\u00f6rgyi\u2019s companies we were told that one of the firms, Green Office Solution, has an employee named Viktor Kov\u00e1cs. In July the employee who answered the phone informed us that Kov\u00e1cs was on vacation \u2013 this was also shown on his public pictures uploaded to Facebook. We have tried to contact him several times since then through the company and through his personal email and phone number, but he has not responded. Szentgy\u00f6rgyi and his companies have not answered our questions either.<\/p>\n

The rise<\/h2>\n

Among the companies of Szentgy\u00f6rgyi, IMG Solution Kft. is the most significant. It has been successful in several large public procurements in recent years.<\/p>\n

In general, it is decided in several rounds which companies can provide IT and office technology products to government agencies and other state institutions. First, the Procurement and Supply Directorate selects companies, often dozens of them, through a procurement. The directorate signs a framework contract with the selected companies. Then the individual state agencies can order products, like laptops or photocopy machines, exclusively from these companies. For example, if the National Tax Authority wants to buy new computers, it has to solicit offers from the companies in the framework contract and will choose one of them.<\/p>\n

IMG Solution got its first framework contract in September 2013. It was a 44-billion-forint (142.8-million-euro) framework contract for \u201ccomputer systems and related services.\u201d The company has become a participant of several similar framework contracts since then.<\/p>\n

There is no publicly available data on the actual orders these companies are receiving in the framework contracts. The Procurement and Supply Directorate first told Direkt36 that it was willing to release this data in return of a fee of more than half a million HUF (1,5 thousand EUR). After we took them to court with the legal assistance of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, they agreed to release for free most of the data we had requested.<\/p>\n

The data showed that IMG Solution was one of the most successful players in the thirteen framework agreements in which it participated between 2013 and 2018. The company received orders worth 6.2 billion HUF, making it the eighth best performing company among the 169 companies participating in the framework agreements. IMG Solution has been a supplier to many universities, government offices and hospitals.<\/p>\n

With these contracts under its belt, IMG Solution has skyrocketed. While in the first years of its operation the company made only a few tens of millions HUF, in 2013 its revenue was 166 million HUF (539 thousand EUR), which jumped to 4.7 billion HUF (15.2 million EUR) in 2015. Last year, the company generated a 9.5-billion-HUF turnover, out of which after-tax profit was more than 1.3 billion HUF.<\/p>\n

Other firms of Szentgy\u00f6rgyi have also been successful in public procurements, even if they have produced far more modest results.<\/p>\n

However, last autumn, the company group expanded further with VRS Magyarorsz\u00e1g Kft., which has also been a successful player in IT procurement for many years. According the procurement data, it received orders worth 7 billion HUF from the National Tax Authority. IMG was also a supplier to the tax office, where for a while a man with personal ties to both Szentgy\u00f6rgyi and Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr. was the leader of the department in charge of major procurements.<\/a> The position of the manager was terminated<\/a> after Direkt36 exposed this relationship in a story earlier this year.<\/p>\n

For Hungarian company data, we used the services of\u00a0Opten.<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

G\u00e1bor Szentgy\u00f6rgyi has a common business with the son-in-law of the prime minister’s brother, and one of his business interests opened a branch on a property owned by a company of the Orb\u00e1n family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-444.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[142,143,146,258,259,312],"ppma_author":[522,556],"class_list":["post-9741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-az-orban-csalad-uzletei","tag-img","tag-img-solution","tag-informatika","tag-orban-gyozo","tag-orban-viktor","tag-szentgyorgyi-gabor","author-cap-andraspetho","author-cap-zoldi-blankadirekt36-hu"],"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":""},{"term_id":556,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-zoldi-blankadirekt36-hu","display_name":"zoldi.blanka@direkt36.hu","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\/9741","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=9741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9741"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}