The first billions of the Nyerges empire

Zsolt Nyerges, CEO of the Fidesz-related Közgép Zrt. and his partners got their first billion from a state credit which was granted to their one-year-old milling company in 2000. The company called Majoros és Társa Kft was founded by a couple working in the construction industry but few months later has been sold to Von Holland Zrt linked to László Tóth, Fidesz-related entrepreneur. Tóth raised the company’s capital from 3 to 100 million HUF and changed its name to Budai Malomipari Kft. The renamed firm had Zsolt Nyerges as a member of board of supervision from this time.

The star of Budai Malomipari Kft rose with Hungarian Development Bank’s credit worth more than 1 billion HUF and given to buy the assets of Budai Hengermalom Kft, an old but bankrupted milling company. It is very rare to grant such a great sum to a newborn company but the most uncommon was that the bank also financed the VTA after the transactions. The bankrupted company was in the hands of Postabank Rt, which chose Nyerges’ new firm as the one and only buyer on its own right. However the newborn Szolnok-based company got the old one’s assets free of the mortgages and other debts, the receipts of Budai Hengermalom Kft have never been settled.

According to our sources such grants could not have been given without political relations. Lajos Simicska, owner of the nowadays billions-winning Közgép Zrt was working as a consultant of the Development Bank this time, which shows a new aspect of the first Orban-regime’s political connections. The Bank did not respond to our freedom of information request about the transaction’s documentation.

The new company’s credits were payed back soon as the company sold two rural assets and leased their most valuable mill on the Buda side of the Danube River to a professional milling company.

As our investigation has shown, the riverside asset which was highly affected of the socialist party-related corruption in the ‘90s became a part of the Simicska-empire on the 2000s. Budai Malomipari Kft became an interest of MAHIR in 2002, István Töröcskei’s Pro-Aurum Kft in 2003 and finally Közgép Zrt has got its piece in 2006.