This is an English translation of the original Hungarian article. Quotations are translated; the original Hungarian text is authoritative.
In the week after the April elections, three bags of official documents – contracts, internal correspondence and certificates of completion – turned up in the bins outside the building of the Közép-Buda School District. Some of the documents were intact or torn by hand, but most of them had been shredded, raising the suspicion that data of public interest was deliberately destroyed. Although the discovery of the discarded documents was recorded on video, the School District denied the facts when we asked, claiming that no documents had been disposed of either last year or this year and that everything is archived.
Since documents of public interest like these may only be disposed of lawfully under the records management policy, we asked the School District about any recent disposal of records. In our question we indicated that, according to our information, the district had disposed of documents – but they denied this in their reply:
“[...] No disposal of records took place either in 2025 or this year; we archive our documents, and such waste cannot end up in public bins.”
The School District's earlier violation
Among the documents in the bags, contracts between the School District and Fábián Ház Kft. appeared several times. We could not find a working website for the company, but its name appeared in a 2023 decision of the Public Procurement Arbitration Board. The board, which supervises public procurement, fined the Közép-Buda School District HUF 3 million because in its procurement procedures it “...invited the same five economic operators to tender, and the same bidder won the procedures…”. That winner was Fábián Ház Kft. The proceedings were launched following a report by Dr. István Novák, a Hegyvidék district councillor, and the violation was covered by Népszava and Mfor.hu. Even so, the Közép-Buda School District and Fábián Ház Kft. kept signing contracts afterwards.
The School District's network of contacts
We tried to map the network of contacts of the School District's management. Among the social media friends of the public procurement consultant engaged by the School District, we found several School District employees as well as the managing director of Fábián Ház Kft. Based on publicly available social media activity, and according to a source with insight into the company, the district's technical officer and other employees also appear to be on cordial terms with the head of the winning company. We even found a comment from the managing director under a photo shared on the social media profile of a close relative of the district director, Éva Hajnissné Anda.
We contacted the School District with our questions. Among other things, we asked whether, in their view, the relationship between the leaders of the Közép-Buda School District Centre and the owner of Fábián Ház Kft. raises the suspicion of a conflict of interest in the procurement procedures.
After we sent our questions, the friend lists on the social media profiles of the procurement consultant and the district's technical officer – previously visible to anyone – were no longer publicly available.
Although the list has since become available again, the managing director of Fábián Ház Kft., who had previously been among the technical officer's friends, was no longer among them at the time of publication.
The story of the winning company
According to the School District's public contracts, it signed contracts worth more than HUF 6 billion with Fábián Ház Kft. over the four years between 2021 and 2024. According to company information portal data, the company's total net revenue for this period was roughly HUF 3 billion. Another interesting detail: based on the public procurement database, we found that Fábián Ház Kft. won public tenders exclusively from the Közép-Buda School District.
A source with insight into the company told us that Fábián Ház Kft. carried out its work very conscientiously and took on several jobs at the School District – such as cleaning and reception services – even though these were loss-making for the company. The source added that the company's availability and the quality of its work were exemplary.
Based on accounts from sources with insight into the School District's operations, the question arose whether there is a connection between certain district purchases and private orders linked to its leaders. We also sent our questions on this to Fábián Ház Kft., which replied as follows:
“[...] Your other questions refer to possible irregularities that never happened; for this reason we neither wish to, nor can, answer them, and we hereby reject the assumption! [...]”
We contacted the School District several times by e-mail and phone, as well as Éva Hajnissné Anda, the head of the district, and its financial director. On one occasion the district director's office promised to call us back, but this did not happen. We received no reply to our e-mails either.
Remains of yellow payment slips among the shredded documents
Among the discarded documents we also found yellow postal payment slips shredded into confetti, which we pieced together. One of the payees was the husband of a School District employee, so we called the employee concerned. When we asked about yellow payment slips and shredded documents, she said she did not know what we were talking about. However, when we mentioned her husband by name as one of the payees on the slips, she said she might have brought in private documents, which she then shredded. In response to a separate question, she stated that this had nothing to do with the School District's finances.
Our video of the discovery of the discarded documents
The destruction of documents we uncovered raises the suspicion that the Közép-Buda School District tried to dispose of data of public interest shortly after the elections. Since the School District denied in its reply that any documents had been destroyed, we are publishing the video recorded when the documents were found.