HVG: Gov’t official’s company got good price on state firm

The state asset manager allegedly sold shares in real estate management firm BIF Nyrt. for less than their actual value in a tender involving only one bidder: a firm owned by a government commissioner, HVG reported yesterday.
A screen grab of the BIF Nyrt. website.
HVG reported in November that government commissioner Mária Schmidt and her family company purchased a 5% stake in BIF (Budapesti Ingatlan Hasznosítási és Fejlesztési) from the state in a tender where her firm was the sole bidder. The shares are part of a package that the government nationalized from private pension fund holdings, according to HVG.
Schmidt’s company, PIÓ-21 Kft., bought 1,339,488 BIF shares for HUF 380 apiece, according to HVG. The National Asset Manager, which oversaw the sale, reportedly said the share price was above the market, but just a few months before the transaction BIF had posted an announcement seeking to buy its own shares for a price of HUF 500 a piece, according to HVG.
According to her online CV she is currently a government commissioner responsible for coordinating the memorial year of the 1956 revolution.She is a Széchenyi-awarded Hungarian historian and teacher at Pázmány Péter University, is the chief director of Terror House Museum in Hungary. She was the chief advisor of Hungaryʼs Prime Minister in the period of 1998-2002, during first Orbán government.
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