Gasfitter-turned-oligarch Lorinc Meszaros, mayor of the tiny village of Felcsut, the boyhood home of his lifelong friend Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, resigned on April 24, saying his friendship with the prime minister made running the local council too difficult.
Meszaros said "significant transactions" lie ahead for the listed companies under his control following his departure from the mayoral post. Shares of Konzum, Opus, and Appeninn – mid-caps traded on the Budapest Stock Exchange, referred to as the "Meszaros papers" – staged huge rallies on Tuesday in response.
By giving up his public figure status, Meszaros said he hopes heightened interest from the media will diminish, and he can concentrate on his business holdings – which include a vast network of companies across sectors from tourism to banking, industry, agriculture, retail, media, and energy.
Announcements on new acquisitions by Meszaros, from buying new hotels to setting up solar power farms or building an isosugar refinery, have already been coming on a weekly basis. Since 2015, he has dominated state tenders with his consortium, and in just a few years accumulated wealth of over HUF130bn (€416mn) to become Hungary's fifth-richest person. His rise to wealth was documented in the international press as an example of the crony capitalism that Viktor Orban was building.
Meszaros has used his influence and friendship with Orban to become the largest media owner in Hungary, with 192 newspapers, including all but two of the 19 county papers with a combined daily readership of 1mn, raising concerns of ever-shrinking media diversity.
Those once critical newspapers have become government mouthpieces with centrally edited content coming from their Budapest headquarters, including editorials and the main political news. Analysts attribute Fidesz's landslide victory in rural areas at the parliamentary elections on April 8 to this huge dominance in the media.
Meszaros told reporters that he will remain the chairman of the Puskas Academy football club, whose stadium is located just a stone's throw from Orban’s home.
The Hungarian PM may have breathed a sigh of relief at the resignation of his friend, whose wealth has become a thorny issue and popular talking point for opposition parties and opposition media. With Meszaros out of political life, he will no longer have to file annual wealth declarations. Once he omitted HUF1bn in new acquisitions from his wealth declaration, which thematised public discourse and embarrassed Fidesz.
Social media sites are full of clumsy comments by Meszaros. When confronted with questions on new acquisitions, he was not fully aware which companies he had purchased the day before. Once asked about the rapid increase of his wealth, which outpaced that of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, he replied, "maybe I am smarter than him".