It is hardly surprising that the Paks expansion required the purchase of a number of former fields, woodlands and pastures from their owners. What is less easy to explain is why the state company responsible for the project reportedly paid a price that was 100 times higher than expected. Once again, the deal appears to feature businessmen and names close to the Orbán system.

Huge corruption scandal saw money disappear in Paks

The first, and second, glance at the case is enough to make it deeply troubling. Attention was drawn to it by Ákos Hadházy, the former independent MP, who previously sat with Momentum, and who announced on Facebook that he had also filed a criminal complaint. Documents published alongside his post suggest that, in 2020, the company responsible for the expansion bought a 24-hectare forest-and-pasture plot at a price 100 times higher than normal.

Mr Hadházy says that at the time land of this quality in the area would have been worth no more than 1.5 million forints, yet the contract was signed with the then owner at 150 million forints per hectare. The total purchase price therefore came to 3.5 billion forints.

The stolen money could have prevented the present crisis

In all, Paksi Ipari Park Nkft, the state-owned company carrying out the long-delayed Paks II project, bought similar land for a total of 32 billion forints, again, according to Mr Hadházy, at vastly inflated prices. He argues that the money siphoned off would have been enough to prevent the current cooling problems, improve the pumps and ensure the plant could keep operating even when the Danube’s water level is low.

Szekszárd’s council did not want to release the purchase contracts, and Transparency International had to warn it twice that it was obliged to disclose the documents and could not even black out the names of the owners receiving the purchase price.

According to Mr Hadházy, one of the beneficiaries was the company of Zsolt Kapitány, a longstanding Fidesz loyalist. “He made more than one billion by buying the dilapidated buildings of the former meat plant in Szekszárd from the state for a pittance, then selling them on to Paks 2 at a much higher price a year later,” Mr Hadházy wrote. He reported the businessman at the time, but says the prosecution service threw out the complaint on what he regards as a ridiculous pretext.

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Did later Tisza politicians also benefit?

The former MP says there is another twist. While he does not see any other familiar Fidesz figures on the list apart from Mr Kapitány, he does see Tisza-linked names.

He says the reason such enormous sums ended up with Fidesz figures — and later with people who went on to become Tisza politicians — was that the land had first had to be reclassified, because the nuclear plant could not acquire agricultural land directly. The fat profits were pocketed by those who acted as intermediaries and arranged the process.

PM Péter Magyar in Paks. Photo: MTI

“Who exactly these clever fixers were, and how much they made from the affair, will have to be decided by an investigation. If we really are moving towards a change of regime, one can only hope that an inquiry will not be refused even if people close to the new government are among those implicated,” Mr Hadházy wrote.

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