János Fónagy

As Secretary of State for transport policy at the Ministry of National Development, János Fónagy defended the government's decision to classify for ten years the contracts and feasibility study behind the Chinese-loan-financed Budapest–Belgrade railway. When journalists asked about the project's payback period — which experts estimated at up to 2,400 years — Fónagy responded: "The figures in your questions and the payback period you raise can at best be considered speculation; the estimates published in the press are entirely without foundation." Under a law passed by the Fidesz–KDNP supermajority, the government withheld the contracts and related documents for the roughly HUF 700 billion investment — 85 percent of it financed by a Chinese loan — from public disclosure for ten years. As a result, neither the real costs nor the payback calculations could be independently verified by the public or press for years.