Entrepreneur Eliosos also appeared in Hungary’s largest secondary school investment
Gergely László Hauberl, who was a board member of Elios Zrt. after 2016, also appeared in the giga investment Dunakeszi Diáknegyed. In recent years, the companies he managed have achieved multi-billion dollar profits, Narancs.hu found out.
As is well known, the European Union’s Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) report investigating 35 public procurements, published in 2018, raised suspicions of fraud and organized crime due to the circumstances in which many local governments linked to István Tiborcz (the son-in-law of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán) Elios Innovatív Zrt for the modernization of public lighting realized with EU support contracted with . Although the prosecutor’s office ordered an investigation into the case, it was closed within a few months citing the lack of the National Investigation Office.
OLAF recommended to the European Commission that the Hungarian state should provide HUF 13 billion in support. Finally, a government the EC could not be convinced– that the Elios investments were legal, and therefore the sum in question was ultimately covered by the Hungarian state.
István Tiborcz In 2015, he sold his share of the business in EliosMember of the WHB Group owned by Attila La Paár, for the benefit of WHB Befektetési Kft., and Gergely Hauberl Board member in 2016 became in Elios (later Elios Zrt. was 100% owned by WHB, In 2015, it won 21 public procurements and generated a record profit of 7.7 billion). Gergely Hauberl before boarding the Elios worked in the IT sector, is also the current managing director of Green Investments & Solutions Kft., which was previously also managed by Tiborcz. Elios Zrt. was liquidated in 2021.
Gergely Hauberl was also the managing director of a certain Plasma Expert Kft., which trades in human blood plasma; the 24.hu reported on this back in 2020that the company’s billion-dollar company is a company registered in the United Arab Emirates, Golden Bay Trading FZE, and since the company is located in a free trade owner zone, there is no need to tax the profits (Hauberl only ran the company for a few months in 2016, the current owned by Atlantis International Holding LLC-FZ, also registered in the United Arab Emirates).
Tuti high school in Dunakeszin
Back in January, Narancs.hu was the first to report that the government had given the nod to the Dunakeszi Student Quarter investment. Two high schools with sports halls, sports fields and a swimming pool, capable of educating 1,500 students, will be built in the settlement bordering Budapest. Bence Tuzson, the parliamentary representative of the region, said at the time that there had never been such a large secondary school investment in Hungary.
This is certainly the case; the tender for the investment was won by Attila Paár’s WHB and Laterex Zrt. with its HUF 37 billion offer (Paár is often referred to as István Tiborcz’s business partner). But it is enough to look at the visual designs of high schools, which ones are the best they remind me of hyper-super equipped schools seen in American movies.
“Dunakeszi Student District” from a bird’s eye view
Source: Incorso Kft.
Mayor Csaba Dióssi recently reported that almost all seven buildings are already standing; there is one on which the roof structure construction will start soon.
The prestige of the investment is shown by the fact that a in government decree 300 million forints were set aside for communication alone (a few months ago we submitted a data request in the public interest in order to find out which companies the municipality signed a contract with for this task; according to their information at the time, the amount had not yet reached them, but they promised to provide information about the partners later ).
We were curious about which companies are involved in the investment, i.e. with whom and for what tasks the main contractor signed a subcontract. To find out, we submitted a public interest data request to the BMSK Zrt. investment agency responsible for the project. This is how it turned out that the WHB Group member, PBM Kft. (exactly PBM Mélyépító Kft., listed as PBM Kft. on the official document), whose managing director is the aforementioned Gergely Hauberl, is participating in the investment. We contacted the group of companies to find out exactly what kind of activity the company was engaged in; “they are doing deep and piling work”, informed the WH, but they did not reveal more (this much is also revealed in the public interest data request).
According to the WHB site, the PBM Mélyépító Kft. Since 2017, he has been regularly working on public investments. Among other things, the company was used in projects such as the House of Hungarian Music, the new Museum of Ethnography, the new building of the National University of Public Service, and the Buda Palace. Its annual sales were around 2.7 – 3.5 billion. Also belonging to the company group, a similar successful trend can be seen PBE Építő Kft. regarding which Hauberl is also the managing director.
(Source of our cover image: WHB Group Facebook)