By Andras Petho

Sándor Pintér, Hungary’s Minister of the Interior, says he has no links with the private security firm that he sold in 2010 and that has continued to gain one lucrative government contract after another.

Pintér says he sold the business before his appointment as minister in 2010 explicitly in order to avoid any possible conflict of interest.

But while the minister has no links on paper to the corporation, recent changes have left the firm in the hands of former business partners with close ties to Pintér and his family.

Company records show that the firm, Civil Biztonsági Szolgálat Zrt. (Civil Security Service Inc. or CBSZ) was taken over in July 2013 by two people connected in multiple ways to the minister and his family: his former next-door neighbor, Péter Szabó, and Vilmos Tölgyesi, who has worked with Pintér, his wife, and his daughter in various enterprises.

Looking for business

Pintér, a soft-spoken former National Commissioner of Police, has an extensive record of public service as well as an enviable knack for growing a prosperous business.

This is his second stint as Minister of the Interior. He first held the post during the initial government of the current Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, until its defeat in 2002. Out of a job, the former minister took over CBSZ in 2003, when it had annual revenues of 1 billion forints (US$4.8 million), records show. When he sold it seven years later, it was making six times as much.

Under Pintér’s leadership, the company became a major player in the security industry. It won contracts with some of the country’s most important private companies in the banking and energy sectors. Its revenue grew by almost a billion a year to reach more than 6 billion forints (US$29.5 million) in 2010.

That was the year Pintér was again invited to lead the Ministry of the Interior in Orbán’s new government. He sold the company in late March, when polls showed Orbán’s party with a firm lead ahead of the April election.

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