As the mayor of Zugló, he was in an embarrassing situation because of parking in the district, he now explained his certificate, but the current mayor of the district, Csaba Horváth, who was suspected of bribery, escaped interrogation.
There is only one session left of the work of the commission , and then the work that has lasted for almost two years will come to an end, which so far has resulted in far more failures than results. It would be a big surprise if there were many serious substantive findings in the reports, but we will have to wait a few more weeks for this to be revealed.
Christmas did not make Comrade Bástya
The board closed the hearings at its last meeting. In principle, those who did not appear before for some reason were "summoned", but the activity was not much greater now than before, in fact. But the investigation committee was also toothless, two of them were on vacation, and Krisztina Baranyi was sick, and unlike plans, she could not join the company online, which caused a problem because parking was on the agenda, and she is the coordinator of that topic . On the other hand, Gergely Karácsony appeared before the committee, not as mayor, but as the former first person of Zugló, and he reported on the parking issues that caused a big storm at the time.
The XIV. the former mayor of the district was invited for the first time, and he was particularly happy about it, because he already felt a little like Comrade Bástya - who thinks he deserves shit because they didn't even want to kill him - and they don't want his opinion. Karácsony reminded the committee that in the cycle beginning in 2014, Zugló concluded two contracts related to parking. A lot of media attention was given to the agreement related to the procurement and technical operation of the vending machines, which "also raised certain questions", he claimed, but - as he put it - the contract was less in line with the public interest, which deals with the classic parking operation and parking control.
The former mayor said that his biggest disputes with the representative body - both the pro-government and the opposition factions - erupted in connection with the termination of this agreement. He subtly hinted that the parking management company was not overly cost-effective, even though the amount of income always depends on this. The compromise solution reached in the representative body is that public procurement for the operation of the parking lot will be announced for two years only. After the deadline, the mayor's office carried out this work, and it turned out to be approx
was able to operate the parking lot for half as much as the previously winning company
The press, on the other hand, mostly dealt with vending machine purchases and technical operation - the current mayor recalled those times - for which the representative body announced a public procurement procedure in 2016. Three people entered the tender, and two finally submitted a valid offer. However, the evaluation committee recommended that one of the applicants who made the cheaper offer be excluded from the procedure, and this was finally accepted by the representative body.
In Christmas, however, serious doubts arose - his relationship with the clerk working on the committee deteriorated, so he left the office a few months later - so he abstained from this voting party and examined the possibility of how market competition could be enforced. He told the committee that he was no stranger to the political veto, he did it four times, but in this case, in the public procurement procedure, this is not a good method, because instead of political decisions, there is the possibility of legal remedies.
Parking mafias
In addition, it seemed that the disqualified applicant took advantage of this, he initiated a preliminary dispute settlement procedure, which, however, he withdrew ten minutes before the meeting of the evaluation committee. What Karácsony regretted was because he, as mayor, would have had the right to change the bad decision of the representative body. The mayor does not know what to think, how and why the two bidders agreed on the background, but according to him, despite these, Zugló did not buy these devices under the worst conditions, which were quite modern and not too expensive. He did not make a bad deal, especially compared to Ferencváros, where he believes a parking mafia has developed. At the same time, he believes that the biggest mobster of parking is the state itself, since 10 percent of the amount received from mobile payments goes to the central budget through the national mobile payment system, without this company contributing anything meaningful to parking.
After Karácsony's hearing, Gábor Havasi announced that no one else except the mayor accepted the invitation, with the exception of Csaba Horváth, the current mayor of Zugló, who is a member of the committee anyway. Horváth's role in the parking cases is interesting because he was suspected of corruption by the Central Investigative Prosecutor's Office in February this year. At the time, the authority wrote in its announcement that, according to the well-founded suspicion, in 2016, while still a member of the Metropolitan Assembly, the suspect and his partner were looking for a company to operate the planned paid parking system in Zugló, from which the
they claimed half of their profits.
has been denying everything ever since , but the subject should have been addressed at this meeting, if the board were to reveal cases of suspected corruption.
However, the MSZP politician did not speak about the case, nor did the other members of the committee bring it up. Horváth only touched on the fact that the current parking model in Zugló is efficient and works well, and he said that he contacted NAV two years ago that the XIV. District vending machines should be connected to the tax authority in the same way as cash registers, because with this step it would be possible to track exactly how much revenue is due to a device or a license plate number, but they didn't even get an answer.
The new trails should already be planned
The committee meeting had another interesting moment, when the matter of subway 4 was brought up. Ferenc Olti left his job as a bank manager to work on the project. And now he gave two pieces of advice to the leadership of the capital. On the one hand, it should have planned the route of the newer networks a long time ago, as it is done in other big cities, and at least the construction planning of metro 5 should have been dealt with already. On the other hand, he said, there are three actors in this kind of investment, the investor, the contractor and the engineering office supervising the works. However, the capital's management trusted the engineering office too much - even though it had different interests - and as an investor, it did not have its own technical experts, which was a big mistake that must be avoided in the future.
The members of the committee finally agreed that those responsible for corruption topics would submit their draft reports by July 30, the members would comment on them and make suggestions, and only then would they meet again to finalize the texts and attach the dissenting opinions to the documents. It is a big question whether there will be substantive findings in these that made it worthwhile to hold meetings for almost two years.
Photo: MH/Róbert Hegedüs
