Last March in the runup to the elections, the Hungarian opposition rented almost 300 fifty-seater buses from a company renting out microbuses.

The Hungarian press reported earlier that DatAdat Professional Kft had spent a total of 50 million forints (132 thousand euros), whereas Everybody’s Hungary Movement (MMM) spend some 40 million forints (105 thousand euros) for passenger transportation with buses last March. A source with knowledge of the official investigation into the campaign financing of the united opposition told Mandiner that DatAdat, a company with ties to the Left and involved in the Hungarian campaign financing with U.S. money, may have contracted a passenger transport company to provide bus services in connection with the joint opposition’s campaign event on 15 March, also attended by Donald Tusk. The same company was also contracted by MMM in March.

Something, however, is off around the orders. According to the contract, which was obtained by Mandiner’s editorial office, both DatAdat and MMM ordered bus transportation services from Fulvia Kft. DatAdat, which was previously linked to former Socialist PM Gordon Bajnai, rented 150 buses, each with 50 seats, for the 50 million forints mentioned above.

Joint opposition PM candidate Peter Marki-Zay’s movement spent 40 million forints on busing services with Fulvia Kft. This means that if the company gave them the service at a similar price to DatAdat, MMM could have rented around 120-125 fifty-seater buses.

However, according to the company’s website, the company is mainly engaged in the rental of minibuses and cars, which may suggest that they would not have been able to provide the service they were contracted to provide.

So, the question arises: how would they be able to provide more than 200 buses with a 50-seat capacity each? This may also be backed by the fact that, according to a source who has insight into the investigation, Fulvia Ltd. may have involved subcontractors due to the „size” of the contract, and the majority of the nearly one hundred million-forint amount may have remained with the main contractor. To confirm our information, we have contacted the company’s CEO via the contact details in the Opten database.

The fact that the crowd at the joint Left’s event last year, commemorating the national holiday, was by far not big enough to justify the large number of vehicles ordered provides even more food for thought.

According to mandiner.hu’s calculations, they could have transported up to 13-15 thousand people with such a large fleet of vehicles, but even the leftist media had a big controversy about whether there were enough people on the otherwise rather narrow Muegyetem rakpart [on the Danube bank on the Buda side of the capital]. Since there are two contracts, it is not impossible that the company has agreed to provide the same service to both parties. However, the option that the leftist campaign organisers wanted to „cover” the costs by sharing the commission cannot be ruled out either, the Hungarian portal writes.