Sándor Fazekas

Sándor Fazekas headed Hungary's agriculture/rural development ministry from 2010 to 2018, the body responsible for running the country's largest post-transition state farmland lease auctions. An Átlátszó investigation found that the law firm of the minister's personal advisor, Péter Kovács (KPZ), received monthly retainers of several hundred thousand to a million forints from the Agricultural Chamber for land-policy coordination work, while separately billing Fazekas's ministry HUF 25 million in 2012 and HUF 12 million in 2013; Kovács also personally represented Fazekas in a political lawsuit. Regarding the 2015 Hortobágy land lease auctions, Átlátszó documented that the family of another Fazekas advisor, the Kobzas, received roughly HUF 103.6 million in state subsidies over the four years since 2010, even though their company's total revenue was only about HUF 30 million — the land they farmed grew from 65–70 hectares to more than 200 hectares. In the same auction round, the family of a separate beneficiary, Péter Kun, received a combined roughly HUF 470 million in subsidies since 2010. The cases document that the minister's narrow circle of advisors and associates obtained disproportionate benefit from the state land allocation processes his own ministry supervised.