- 24.hu has uncovered traces of a mysterious business that connects Balázs Kertész and his family, well-known associates of Antal Rogán, with a Chinese key figure in the residency bond business, Lian Wang. The trail leads from the British Virgin Islands to Switzerland, revealing a rather intricate business network.
- Based on the available evidence, the company represented by the Chinese businessman invested vast amounts into two Hungarian companies taken over just last year by Kertész’s children, who have barely passed the age of majority.
- The entrance of the company represented by Wang in the two Hungarian firms seems just as irrational from a business perspective as the company’s exit from the business last year, seemingly leaving behind nearly three billion forints.
- The owner of the Hungarian companies, now bursting with money from abroad, is a Swiss company which happens to be the owner of the Gellért Hill luxury villa used by Balázs Kertész.
- We conducted an investigation attempting to reconstruct how these billions were moved around the two main players in our story.
The money came from a company registered in the British Virgin Islands to wealth management companies currently led by the children of Balázs Kertész. At the time of the transaction, the company Delight Capital Global Holdings Limited – registered in the Caribbean offshore paradise – was represented by Lian Wang, a somewhat known figure to the Hungarian public. The Chinese national obtained a privileged role from the Hungarian state, as the Hungary State Special Debt Fund (HSSDF), led by him, was given exclusivity to sell residency bonds in China, yielding enormous profits for the privileged company. The privileges were granted without tendering.
The chosen one
The residency bond sales program was pushed through the Hungarian parliament by Antal Rogán back in 2012. The essence of the program was that foreigners would receive residence permits, business establishment opportunities, and the right to free movement within the European Union in exchange for purchasing Hungarian state bonds worth 250-350 thousand euros (roughly 100 million forints). Only companies designated by the Hungarian state could sell these special bonds. This is where Lian Wang, a Chinese businessman previously in the employment of Deutsche Bank as well as Morgan Stanley, came into play.
The Hungarian state’s permission to sell the bonds in China was granted to HSSDF, a company led by Wang – registered in 2013 in the Cayman Islands, also considered an offshore tax haven. Besides Wang, one Jonathan Chang also appeared among the firm’s founders, who later made headlines by booking a helicopter sightseeing tour in Hong Kong under the name of Árpád Habony, an informal advisor to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
By the end of 2016, approximately 4700 residency bonds were subscribed by Chinese nationals as part of the program; a huge business for HSSDF, as the company worked for a fee of 40,000 euros per person, equivalent to 14-15 million forints. It’s no wonder that Wang told 24.hu in 2015 that “the sale of residency bonds is doing very well in China.”
A well-tried lawyer, a confidant and a luxury villa
Antal Rogán’s circle was directly linked to the residency bond business. According to a contract, Kristóf Kosik’s law firm could have received nearly one and a half million forints for each residency bond sold – meaning that the entire enterprise may have yielded 7 billion HUF to the lawyer’s company. Kosik’s firm has several ties to the current cabinet minister: on occasion it has represented the former District V mayor in court, received several assignments from the then-Fidesz-led municipality, worked for Fidesz’s parliamentary faction in the 2010s, and has also received several projects from the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office now led by Rogán. What’s more, Rogán Antal’s mysterious confidant has also worked at Kosik’s firm – and this brings us to another main character in the case, Balázs Kertész.
Kertész and Rogán’s legendary alliance was forged in Fidelitas, Fidesz’s youth wing. Their close relationship continued in Budapest’s downtown District V, where Rogán was mayor while Kertész worked first as municipal representative, and later as the head of the district’s asset management company – the latter garnered significant attention due to the rather fishy real estate deals and other financial transactions surrounding the municipality. The two politicians’ names first appeared together in the K&H scandal. According to a note,
Kertész is the one handling Antal Rogán’s bribery-related matters.
Ultimately, however, neither Rogán nor Kertész’s names appeared in the indictment of the broker case.
As Rogán Antal rose to ministerial positions, Kertész gradually faded into the background. But the two friends continued to walk crossing paths, and the Kertész family would also play a role in Rogán’s personal financial growth. Fidesz’s propaganda chief also raked in significant fortunes as an inventor: he took part in the development of an electronic signature technology, the patent for which was sold to a company owned by Kertész’s former wife.
Rogán’s fellow inventors, on another note, funnelled their company’s dividends to Switzerland, while Kertész has also bought a luxury apartment in the country. But the threads of another estate used by Kertész lead to Switzerland, too: it was uncovered by newspaper Magyar Narancs in 2018 that a Gellért Hill luxury villa served as Kertész residence, which today is also the headquarters of two Hungarian companies owned by Kertész. (Monavis Consulting and Monavis Holding Plc.). The villa is the property of Rezeda 5 Property Utilisation Ltd., which was acquired by the Swiss company Green Protagonist AG from another Swiss company in May last year – the former has played a crucial role in the transactions between the residency bond-tycoon Lian Wang and the Kertész family.
Enter the Kertész boys
Balázs Kertész’s two sons, 19-year-old Vince and 20-year-old Kristóf, emerged in the business world last year. Both became CEOs of companies dealing with asset management almost simultaneously. They took over the management of Green Choice Technologies Plc. and Green Wealth Plc. at the same time as these companies came under the ownership of the aforementioned Swiss company, Green Protagonist AG.
The two asset management companies in question have several points in common:
- Before the appearance of the Kertész boys, both were created with identical share structures, in the same law firm, almost simultaneously, in 2019.
- The founders are private individuals unknown to the public, who later transferred their ownership shares almost simultaneously.
- Additionally, in both cases, two months after the founding, a mysterious new shareholder appeared in the company:
It was through a capital increase that the company established in the offshore paradise entered both Hungarian firms as a shareholder, but Wang’s enterprise became an owner under business conditions that seemed quite irrational. In both asset management companies, it received only one single class B share with a nominal value of 1 forint in exchange for its investment, entitling it to only a proportionally distributed share of 10 per cent of the dividends generated by the company.
Considering that besides the shares represented by Wang’s company, the companies comprised of 2,250,000 additional class B shares, Delight Capital was indeed entitled to a minuscule amount in dividends. Although money wasn’t withdrawn from the asset management firms very often, there once was an instance of 136 million forints being paid out in dividends in one of the companies, but as per the contract,
All this is particularly interesting in light of the fact that the Delight Capital, represented by Wang, invested nearly three billion forints in the two companies, each founded with a starting capital of only five million forints.
- Green Choice Technologies Plc.’s account received 4 million euros, worth 1 billion 325 million forints at the time’s exchange rate,
- While 4 million 794 thousand euros, amounting to 1 billion 581 million HUF at the time, was transferred to Green Wealth Plc. by Wang’s company.
The asset management firms’ balance sheets reveal that the fortune of approximately three billion forints transferred by the Chinese businessman’s company in 2019 practically comprises all the assets present in Kertész boys’ two enterprises.
Last summer, the British Virgin Islands-based company decided to withdraw from both asset management companies on the same day and proceed to sell its shares to the Swiss company close to the Kertész family, mentioned earlier (Green Protagonist AG). The details of the transaction are not known, so it’s unclear whether the Swiss firm had paid anything for each class B share with a nominal value of 1 forint, and if so, how much.
The diagram below shows the intricate business network of the affair’s main players.
At last year’s general meeting, where Balázs Kertész’s son Kristóf was appointed CEO of Green Wealth Plc., the offshore firm was represented by Balázs Kertész as Lian Wang’s official proxy, indicating a relationship of trust between the former politician and the Chinese businessman playing a key role in the residency bond business.
We reached out to both Lian Wang and Balázs Kertész to inquire about the details of the story, as well as under what circumstances they had made each other’s acquaintance, but neither has responded.
