Fidesz: Opposition ‘bankrupting Budapest’

Mayor Gergely Karacsony and other national opposition leaders “won’t provide an answer to the question of where the money went … they are wrapped in stubborn denial,” they said.

Fidesz insisted that deputy mayor Ambrus Kiss had recently “tried to explain a messed up advertising tender”, which would have brought an annual 1.7 billion forints to the city for the right to use the advertising surfaces of public transport for 8 years. They insisted that the city leaders should have signed an agreement with the French firm that won a contract to use advertising facilities connected to Budapest’s public transport, but the city “said no to those funds for reasons as yet unknown” and “put out the same tender, which the same company won once again,” he said, adding that the city would now receive two-and-a-half times less from the company.

In its statement, Fidesz also said the city’s finances were “nearly an annual one billion forints in the red”. “That one advertisement deal alone has made the city short of 3.5 billion forints since November 2019,” they added.