Yet another audio recording reveals that the politician has been lying. The scandal that has been unfolding for weeks now is causing a significant loss of face for the mayor and his immediate circle.

Published by the news portal Origo on Friday, the new video reveals two more falsehoods stated by Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony and Municipality officials. Contrary to what they have been claiming, the discussion on the sale of the City Hall the chief of Budapest’s assessment management firm had with various businessmen took place on 5 May this year, and not last year, within the framework of preparing a study examining development options for the City Hall property. In addition, the video also makes it clear that Budapest’s top leaders, including Gergely Karacsony and his circle, were not only aware of talks on the sale, but, in fact, greenlighted those negotiations.

The Budapest City Hall scandal erupted when when documents came to light, indicating that the City Hall building – a listed monument – and the plot it occupies would go on sale for about 100 million euros. Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony reacted to the news on his Facebook account by posting that „no decision has been made on the sale of the property”.

Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony (on the right)

Later, however, sound recordings also surfaced, revealing that Balazs J. Barts, CEO of Budapest’s asset management firm (Budapest Fovaros Vagyonkezelo Kozpont Zrt.), did initiate negotiations on the sale of the City Hall building and the associated plot of land.

The Municipality of Budapest responded in a statement saying it had ordered a study on the City Hall’s potential development options with a view to assist the assembly’s decision-making process. This „took stock of the possible short-, medium-, and long-term development options for the City Hall property, with an estimate of their approximate revenues and costs. In order to provide these estimates, consultations with market actors also had to be carried out,” the statement adds.

In other words,

they admit that plans are afoot to sell one of Budapest’s iconic, protected buildings, and that there have been negotiations toward that end.

However, the newly released audio recording clearly reveals that the head of the capital’s asset management company discussed the sale of the City Hall with several businessmen on 5 May this year, and not as part of the preliminary study compiled last year.

In the recording, the head of the capital’s asset management company, Balazs Barts says of the sale of the City Hall that “the reaction, surprisingly, was that, the thing that the decision makers liked the most was that we should not leave [the location] because it would be [provoke] too much of an attack to pull out of the city centre. (…)

And if there is interest, let’s sell the whole building. Here is the old city wall, [the area] outside the city wall should remain the capital’s, and let’s see if this building, if somebody would buy this sixty thousand-square-metre building.”

Then Mr Barts continues, “I just want to show – what Gyula said – that this is the stance of the politicians. I told them not to go into it [the details] and start talking about 12,000 square metres and building the category A office building for 620,000 forints (nearly 1.7 thousand euros per square metres) plus VAT and 250,000 (683 euros) per square metre of an underground car park. Because this is not where the issue stands yet. The question is if the city hall can be in another location and in a new building? Or do we make a new building here (…). So we have an old City Hall and something new will be built next to it. They responded, that’s a go! And then this decision was made.”

In other words, the recording cannot be interpreted in any other way but that the Municipality politicians, that is, Mr Karacsony’s circle, knew about the plans to sell the City Hall and approved it, in practice giving the authorisation to seek a buyer for the City Hall building and the majority of the plot, Origo points out.

Anonymous, the masked figure revealing the audio recording, adds at the end of the video that there’s “a buyer, more than one” for the City Hall. „The decision of the politicians is, therefore, that the City Hall and most of the plot must be sold, and a new city hall must be built on the remaining plot.”