In May 2024, nine employees of the railway construction company V-Híd, owned by billionaire Lőrinc Mészáros who made his fortune through public contracts received during the 16-year-long rule of his longtime friend Viktor Orbán, boarded an elegant private jet. Its cabin features wood-panelled furniture and beige leather seats, while a sofa in the rear of the aircraft provides a comfortable place to relax during the journey.

The company employees were travelling to southwestern France for a four-day team-building event. They stayed at an estate in a village of fewer than 300 people, about an hour’s drive from Bordeaux.

The impressive Château de Clotte is surrounded by vineyards and hills, while an outdoor swimming pool provides additional comfort for guests. The estate has been owned by a Hungarian for several years: it was purchased by László Kalocsai, Lőrinc Mészáros’ winemaker and business partner, who subsequently opened a four-star hotel on the property.

The railway construction company paid a gross €158 773 for the event at the elegant hotel. The participants stayed in nine apartments, each of which cost more than €555 per person per night.

A variety of programmes provided entertainment, including massages, a vintage car tour and a boat trip on the Bay of Arcachon. The bay is famous for its oyster farms and is also home to Europe’s tallest sand dune, offering breathtaking views of the surrounding area.

€461 was charged for cigars, while another part of the programme allowed guests unlimited consumption of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, at a cost of €3717.

We reconstructed the details of the trip from confidential documents that contain information about the internal operations of V-Híd. The documents obtained by Direkt36 do not reveal exactly who took part in the trip, but they provide plenty of other information about the overall luxury spending of the Mészáros company. Trips to Dubai, the French Riviera and even Tajikistan were charged to the company, while in Cannes they also rented a yacht, at an additional cost of €600 000.

According to documents obtained by Direkt36, Mészáros’s company spent more than 3.3 million euros) on foreign travel in recent years, even though V-Híd was primarily working in Hungary at that time.

The company also spent substantial amounts on domestic events, one of which was hosted by Anita Köböl, who is currently spokesperson of the government of the Tisza Party that defeated Viktor Orbán’s party in the parliamentary elections in April.

The documents also revealed that a trust company purchased several aircrafts using the assets of Mészáros’s companies. One of the planes was used by Viktor Orbán for a private trip.

V-Híd Zrt., which specializes in railway construction, is one of the most profitable companies in the Mészáros business empire. Last year, it generated an after-tax profit of approximately 65.9 million euros and paid nearly 25.14 million euros in dividends to the billionaire from Felcsút. This is largely attributable to state contracts: according to data compiled by Transparency International Hungary, the company won one of the highest numbers of public procurement contracts over a recent three-year period. For example, it won the tender for the construction of the Southern Ring Railway, and it is also involved as a subcontractor in the construction of the Hungarian section of the Budapest–Belgrade railway line and in the expansion of the M1 motorway.

“Yachting and helicopter trips are symptoms of the fact that our public procurement system is not fair, because if it were, there would not be money for all this. The public procurement system has been a breeding ground for corruption,”

József Péter Martin, executive director of Transparency International Hungary, told Direkt36 about the railway construction company’s luxury trips.

Château de Clotte, the French estate where V-Híd staff traveled – Source: Château de Clotte / Facebook.

We sent V-Híd a detailed list of questions about the issues raised in the article, but the company did not provide substantive answers. Instead, it stressed that it is not a state-owned company and said that, in its view, the information included in our inquiry constitutes business secrets, and that it does not consent to their publication.

Dubai, Malaga, Dushanbe

The premium-category aircraft rented for the trip to France in 2024 was also used by V-Híd on other occasions. The aircraft was rented from Avcon Jet, an Austrian company specializing in private jets.

In 2023, V-Híd rented the same aircraft for trips to London and Pisa, as well as another destination in France, Nice. According to a document summarizing the trips, the three journeys cost a total of 83 200 euros. (Some of the payments were originally accounted in forints. In this English version of the article all the payments are shown in euros – where had to exchange from forint to euro we used the exchange rate applicable at the time of payment.)

The following year, they spent more than 200 000 euros on private flights. This covered eight foreign trips.

In January 2024, they travelled to London, but spent little time there, returning to Budapest that same evening. Nine days later, they flew to Malaga in southern Spain. At the time, the Puskás Academy football club was holding a two-week training camp in Marbella, less than an hour from the port city. According to a report by Átlátszó, Mészáros, the club’s president, also attended the final match, where he was photographed with members of the team.

In February, the destination was Central Asia, specifically Tajikistan. With its picturesque mountain peaks and remote landscapes, the country is a popular destination for hunters. V-Híd paid 46 200 euros for the trip. The quotation does not reveal exactly who was on board, only that four people travelled. HVG reported last year that in 2024 Mészáros Lőrinc went hunting in the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan with two hunting companions, on a trip organized by a hunting tourism company. It is unclear, however, whether this was the same trip.

According to the rental records, employees of the railway construction company also travelled to Dubai several times. In April 2024, they travelled to the United Arab Emirates on two occasions, paying 94 000 euros for the trips in total.

Accounting for private flights in one of the leaked documents.

In April, there was also time for a one-day trip to the Croatian coast, to Rijeka, followed by a trip to Cannes a month later.

Private jet mystery solved

Átlátszó recently revealed that a trust company named Abraham Goldmann Trust owns two private jets frequently used by Mészáros. Documents obtained by us now reveal that the trust company also manages assets belonging to Mészáros’s companies, and that the aircrafts were purchased from those assets.

A trust arrangement allows individuals or companies to transfer part of their assets to a trustee, who manages them for the benefit of designated beneficiaries. The assets are placed under the control of the trustee. Such arrangements can be useful when discretion is important, as they make the original owner of the assets less visible to the public.

We obtained a document dated June 20, 2025, which was sent by Abraham Goldmann Trust to four Mészáros companies: Talentis, Mészáros and Mészáros, Fejér B.Á.L. and V-Híd. The document reveals that the trustee purchased a new aircraft, registered as OE-LOT, for 19.1 billion forints (around 50 million euros) from the assets under management. In other words, the private jet was purchased using assets belonging to Mészáros’s companies.

Several articles had previously reported that Mészáros Lőrinc frequently uses this aircraft for his travels, and the billionaire has also acknowledged that his companies have a connection to the plane.

The new private jet was purchased after a previous aircraft, registered as OE-LEM, was sold. That aircraft had also been acquired by the trust company from assets placed under its management by Mészáros’s companies. Viktor Orbán, the former prime minister, used the plane when he travelled to Bulgaria in 2018 to attend a Videoton football match.

In November 2023, V-Híd signed a contract to rent the aircraft for 85 flight hours at a cost of 850 000 euros. Thus, the aircraft purchased from assets belonging to Mészáros’s companies was later rented by V-Híd, another company within the Mészáros business empire.

A helicopter, registered as OE-XWY, had been acquired by the trust company two years earlier using assets belonging to Mészáros’s companies and Duna Aszfalt, a company owned by László Szíjj. Szíjj’s companies have also won numerous high-value public contracts during Orbán’s time in power.

The helicopter was most often used to transport passengers from Budaörs, a town near Budapest, or locations elsewhere in Hungary to Budapest Airport, where they would board various private jets. Mészáros Lőrinc and his wife have also travelled on it to Szeged, a city in South of Hungary, while on other occasions Mészáros himself was seen getting out of the helicopter.

V-Híd also used the helicopter: in 2024, the company signed a contract for 100 flight hours in the value of 673 000 euros. According to the internal records, more than 60 hours were actually used by the company.

Citing confidentiality obligations, AGBVK Bizalmi Vagyonkezelő Zrt. stated that it is unable to either confirm or deny the information reported by Direkt36.

In recent days, Átlátszó also reported that the aircraft with the registration number OE-LOT is linked to Lőrinc Mészáros through a trust management company. Based on an airport document, the publication also reported that Mészáros and his family, as well as Zsolt Barna, chairman and CEO of MBH Bank, were able to use the premium-class aircraft—which V-Híd also chartered for numerous international trips—at rates more favorable than market rates.

Payments to Mészáros’ travel company

V-Híd did not always rent private aircraft directly for its foreign trips. On some occasions, it used the services of travel companies.

One of these was Team Travel Kft., which is also owned by Mészáros. According to a 2024 invoice, V-Híd transferred 276 000 euros to the travel company under the description “international air passenger transport”. The contract covered 40 hours of flight time.

That summer, Team Travel organised a two-day trip to Berlin for V-Híd, which cost 152 000 euros. The railway company’s employees stayed at a five-star hotel, where they were allocated eleven superior rooms, each costing 4490 euros.

Guests entering the elegant luxury hotel called Das Stue are greeted in the main entrance by a bronze crocodile head, while marble staircases run along the sides. The hotel has a wellness and spa area, and rooms overlook either the zoo or the Tiergarten park.

Crocodile head at the entrance to a Berlin hotel – Photo: Facebook / SO / Berlin Das Stue

According to an invoice, in July 2025 they flew to Nice, with the trip organized by the travel company. The largest city on the French Riviera is known for its palm-lined seafront promenade and picturesque old town. V-Híd, the company owned by the businessman from Felcsút, paid 109 728 euros for the trip.

V-Híd also contracted Zorko Productions for private jet travel. The travel company is headed by pilot Krisztián Zorkóczy, who attended a Puskás Academy match in Marbella in early 2023 together with Mészáros and the then CEO of V-Híd.

According to an Excel spreadsheet documenting flight expense, the company contracted Zorko Productions for trips worth 593 100 euros. Private jets were used for these journeys as well. The most expensive was a trip to Mauritius in March, which cost nearly 270 000 euros.

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 Mauritius is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, surrounded by beaches and turquoise lagoons. Its coral reefs and diverse marine life also make it a popular destination for diving.

Zorkóczy told Direkt36 that, due to his confidentiality obligations, he could not disclose details about his contracts. He added, however, that “Zorko Production Kft. has not entered into any new contracts with V-Híd Zrt. since 2024.” He also emphasized that “in September and October 2024, I terminated all existing contracts and all types of relationships with this group.”

Yachting on the French Riviera

The documents suggest that V-Híd may have rented the 62-metre yacht Rose D’Or on several occasions. Mészáros Lőrinc has been seen on the yacht several times.

The Malta-registered vessel, which has two swimming pools and a sun deck, can accommodate 12 guests and is estimated to be worth 68 million euros. The luxury yacht attracted attention in the Hungarian press in the summer of 2023, when it was spotted in Italy with Mészáros and his wife, Andrea Várkonyi, on board. Later that year, the yacht also visited several other locations, including Monaco.

Document regarding the rental of the Rose d’Or.

In 2024, two draft contracts were prepared for V-Híd for the use of the yacht, worth a total of 600 000 euros. On both occasions, Cannes was designated as the pick-up location.

A document states that Mészáros Lőrinc would be staying on board for the entire duration of the rental period: “We further hereby confirm and declare that Lőrinc Mészáros will be on board the above-mentioned vessel for the full duration of the Charter Period.” The document identifies Mészáros as the person representing V-Híd during the trip to Cannes.

A few days earlier, the Mészáros–Várkonyi couple had also been spotted by readers of the news site 444 in Monaco, also aboard the Rose D’Or, meaning they had already used the superyacht before the Cannes trip.

According to a draft invoice and a contract, the yacht may have been rented by V-Híd again just over a month later, on August 21. Cannes was again designated as the destination. It is not clear, however, who the passengers were.

According to Maltese company records, the owner of the yacht is a leasing company partly owned by Magyar Bankholding, in which Mészáros also has an interest. Since the beginning of this year, the yacht has been available for charter for 540 000–620 000 euros per week.

Christmas party with the current government spokesperson

The railway construction company appears to place considerable emphasis on community events.

Two years ago, it paid 125 million forints (around 318 000 euros) to attend the European Football Championship in Germany. According to the certificate of completion, this included accommodation and a skybox, allowing the guests to watch the matches from their own VIP box with premium seating. The documents do not reveal exactly who the tickets were for or how many people attended on behalf of V-Híd.

The company also regularly organizes domestic events for its employees. Before Christmas, for example, it usually holds a celebration at the MOM Sports Center in Budapest. According to the invoices, these events cost tens of millions of forints.

The final bill for the 2023 Christmas party was around 251 000 euros. Dinner, a midnight meal and spirits were ordered for 650 people, while there was also a cocktail bar, sushi, darts and a selfie station. Two bands and a DJ provided the entertainment, while the event was hosted by Anita Köböl, who is currently a spokesperson for the Tisza government.

Anita Köböl, the current government spokesperson, at the V-Híd event in 2023 – Photo: Talentis Event and Marketing Kft.

V-Híd also organizes family days at the Hungarian Railway Museum, inviting employees and their families. These events typically cost more than 150 million forints (around 377 000 euros) a year. At a raffle two years ago the main prize was a 1 million forint (2500 euros) voucher for Hunguest Hotels, another company owned by Mészáros. Employees could also compete for an Xbox console and a party speaker.