By Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves
BUDAPEST, May 5 (Reuters) – One of Hungary’s top media players, whose companies have benefited from lucrative state contracts under the outgoing government, has offered to hand over his firms and some of his investments to the state as the new government takes over.
Gyula Balasy, owner of several top media companies that have designed government campaigns for over a decade, made the shock offer in a video interview late on Monday on news site Kontroll.
It is the first major pivot from a top business leader close to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, which was ousted after 16 years in an election last month.
Peter Magyar, leader of the centre-right opposition Tisza party who will take his oath on May 9 as prime minister, has pledged to review state contracts, clamp down on corruption and “reacquire stolen state assets” as part of a campaign that secured his party a landslide win.
“I am offering the group of companies that I have been building for 22 years, which currently perform the events, communications and media purchasing tasks for the state and government, … to the Hungarian state,” Balasy told Kontroll.
“I am not doing this because I have something to hide or because we have done something unlawful or wrong, but because I think the activities that we have performed for the state go beyond market communication activities and therefore … their place is inside the public sector budget.”
KINGMAKER CAMPAIGNS
Balasy’s firms designed Orban’s anti-Ukraine election campaign, which framed the April vote as a choice between war and peace and, among many others, his anti-immigration campaigns.
Balasy said his companies won state procurement contracts that were “entirely transparent”. Balasy also said the accounts of several of his companies had been frozen last Monday. He did not say which authority froze the accounts.
Magyar briefly commented on the Balasy interview on Facebook on Monday, saying with reference to Orban’s allies, “this system could collapse much faster than anyone would think.”
Mark Radnai, vice chairman of Tisza party, said: “This is the man who we have known as Fidesz’s billboard maker, and who in the past eight years has practically dominated the entire market of state communication.”
“Let’s not forget that the money earned was not generated by the market, it was paid by us, Hungarians… nothing will be forgotten.”
According to the companies database Opten, Balasy’s company New Land Media posted net revenue of 85 billion forints ($273 million) in 2024, up from 70 billion in 2020, while their after-tax profit surged to about 9 billion forints from 3 billion. His other main firm Lounge Design saw net revenue surge to 26.3 billion forints from 10 billion in the same period, and net profits quadruple to 4.25 billion from 1.4 billion in 2020.
Transparency International has said that in the 2019-2021 period alone, Balasy’s companies Lounge Design, New Land Media and Media Dynamics won a total of 295 billion forints worth of state contracts mostly from the National Communications Office, which was in charge of Orban’s campaigns and key to winning past elections.
“The number of contracts won by Balasy’s companies has risen significantly, from zero to 150 per year in the Orban regime, between 2012 and 2025,” the Corruption Research Centre CRCB, a Hungarian think tank, said in a report dated April 10, 2026.
($1 = 312 forints)
(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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