Bridge money scandal: this is how one and a half billion forints of corruption money could flow to the City Hall

The dark clouds over the Budapest City Hall led by Gergely Karácsony are getting thicker after the police ordered an investigation into one of the left’s biggest corruption scandals based on Gyula Budai’s complaint.

This case is none other than the overpriced and suspected of corruption Lánchíd renovation, to which, according to the latest information, an ex-lawyer from Simli, Vig Mór, who fell into a multi-hundred million invoice factory, and his lawyer partner, as well as the head of a security company, are also connected.

In order to understand the complicated case, we have to jump back in time to the fall of 2019, when the left-liberal coalition took power in Budapest by electing Gergely Karácsony as mayor. The Karácsonys didn’t stay idle for long and they fired the tender signed by the István Tarlós on favorable terms for the renovation of the Chain Bridge and announced a new public procurement procedure. The winner of the tender was A-Híd Zrt., which also ran under the previous city administration, but oddly enough, they won with a bid five billion forints more expensive than what they would have paid for the work in the Tarlós era. In addition, compared to the tender during Tarlós’ time, the advance payment owed to the contractor was increased to almost sixty times, to HUF 4.2 billion, while the penalty imposed on the company was halved.

Bajnai’s confidant gave the answer

Even at that time, several people objected to the incomprehensible increase in prices, but the public only met with side talk from the Karácsony family. Of course, there were insiders who knew the reason for the price increase. This includes former prime minister Gordon Bajnai’s old confidant, who, according to an audio recording obtained by our newspaper, said that the renovation of the Chain Bridge cost five billion forints more during the Christmas period because money was redistributed from it.

The businessman specifically put it this way: “They are busy with Lánchíd and Blaha Lujza tér, and with looting and distribution around them, etc., etc.” Shocked, the interlocutor asked back, “can you get money out of this?” Gordon Bajnai’s old “fellow comrade” specifically said this in the recording, referring to the Chain Bridge:

Well, it has become more expensive by five billion, and it has less content.”

In other words, the businessman indicated that the left-wing city administration could pump money out of the project.

The key figure in the bridging money scandal

All this conversation took place in the summer of 2021, when – as it turned out later – the Lánchíd money was already flowing to the company of a mysterious lawyer, Mór Vig, who has since been banned from practicing. The man (who is also the brother of Amnesty leader Dávid Vig) can also be called the protagonist of the bridge money scandal. His name became known after NAV detained him in November of last year after he fell into an invoice factory worth hundreds of millions.

In the case, the tax authority conducted house searches at several locations and seized money. In the framework of the procedure, they contacted, among others, a certain lawyer Dániel Hegedüs, as well as A-Híd Zrt., which is carrying out the renovation of the Chain Bridge.

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