Page 35 - BNE_magazine_06_2019

bne June 2019 Central Europe I 35
has long been seen treading carefully between appealing to more liberal parts of society while not alienating the conservatives.
Just weeks earlier, PiS attacked Poland’s LGBT people for being a threat to traditional values of Polish society and branded sexual education “sexualisation of children” that should be opposed.
“We have to take care of the safety of our children and we will do that. We will end tolerance [to sexual abuse of children] and we will end the conspiracy of silence,” the leader of PO Grzegorz Schetyna said at a campaign event in Szczecin.
“How many paedophile priests were sentenced in 2007-2015?” Robert Biedron, the leader of centre-left Wiosna (Spring) party responded to Schetyna, referring to eight years when PO was in power.
Wiosna, alongside social democrats from Lewica Razem (The Left Together), but also the far-right Konfederacja might gain in popularity in the aftermath of the film, attacking PiS and PO for their lack of credibility in handling cases of abuse perpetrated by the Catholic clergy.
For its part, officials of the Catholic church appeared at a loss on how to react to the skyrocketing popularity
of the documentary. The Primate of Poland, bishop Wojciech Polak, thanked the Sekielski brothers for the film and apologised for “every wound inflicted by people of the church.”
Yet, Polak and other seniors of the Catholic church in Poland refused to comment for the film or did not respond to requests to do so, the authors said in the film.
“I was busy. I don’t watch everything that comes up,” archbishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz said when asked by reporters if he had seen the film. The film claims Glodz covered up abuse perpetrated by the late Franciszek Cybula, the former chaplain to then- president Lech Walesa.
PM Viktor Orban's family and friends feature heavily on Hungarian rich list
bne IntelliNews
Istvan Tiborcz, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was ranked 35th on the list of the richest Hungarians with an estimated wealth of HUF35bn (€108mn) according to a compilation by online business website Napi.hu pub- lished on May 9. Tiborcz, aged 33, is the youngest forint billionaire on the list.
Like many oligarchs around Orban, Tiborcz has established a presence in the booming real estate market. His company BDPST acquired a 20.6% share of BSE-listed property developer Appeninn owned by Lorinc Meszaros, who is widely referred to as the proxy of the prime minister.
Meszaros, a former gas fitter, was ranked number two on the Napi.hu list with a wealth estimated at HUF296bn. Most of the gain was generated in the last two years. His wealth stood at HUF8bn in 2015 and HUF24bn a year later before breaking the HUF100bn mark in 2017.
A separate list by Forbes put the former mayor of Felcsut as the richest person in Hungary, ahead of Sandor Csanyi. The list compiled by Napi.hu, however, shows the chairman-CEO of Hungary's largest lender OTP as the richest, with HUF360bn of assets.
Tiborcz made his fortune though Elios, a company which replaced streetlights in more than a dozen Hungarian towns from EU-funds.
The EU's anti-fraud agency OLAF discovered an established system of organ- ised fraud in 17 projects. It uncovered numerous serious irregularities in public procurement procedures involving the former company of Orban's son-in-law. Hungarian police and prosecutors dropped the case despite a spate of evidence against Elios and the more than dozen local municipalities led by Fidesz mayors.
After OLAF said it sought to recover the €38mn development money provided to Hungary, the government chose not to submit invoices to cover the cost of the projects, which was pre-financed from the budget.
The rise and fall of oligarchs around Orban can be traced on their ranking on lists gauging wealth. The wealth of former cashier of the Fidesz party Lajos Simicska was around HUF86bn before his fallout with Orban in 2015. His companies were later excluded from state tenders and the businessman, who became the most ardent critic of the Fidesz-led government threw in the towels after the 2018 election.
www.bne.eu