Hungary: Former official alleges Orbán ordered overpriced telecom purchase

Former Hungarian state secretary Vilmos Vályi-Nagy has alleged that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán directed the government to purchase the telecommunications company Antenna Hungária at a price exceeding what the owners had requested.

In an interview, Vályi-Nagy, who served in the Orbán administration between 2010 and 2014, described weekly Monday morning meetings at Parliament where “problematic cases” were resolved. He claimed these sessions were used to manage tenders and state IT procurements that were often professionally unsound and financially detrimental to the Hungarian state.

Vályi-Nagy specifically noted that the company Elios, which is linked to the business interests of Orbán’s son-in-law, István Tiborcz, regularly won public lighting tenders. He further alleged that an increasing number of state projects became loss-making liabilities for the government while benefiting the implementing companies. The 4iG Group has since responded to these claims, describing them as containing “serious factual errors, misleading distortions, as well as malicious and untrue allegations.”