The State Audit Office of Hungary (ÁSZ) has identified serious irregularities and decisions causing serious losses in relation to the management of the Hungarian National Bank’s (MNB) foundation assets worth hundreds of billions of forints, according to a draft report of ÁSZ obtained by Direkt36.
ÁSZ investigated the economic activities of the Pallas Athéné Domus Meriti Foundation, established during György Matolcsy’s presidency of the MNB and headed by people close to him, and the company Optima Befektetési Ltd., which managed the assets of the organization. The company held nearly HUF 500 billion in assets (about 1.25 billion EUR at the current exchange rate), a large part of which came from public funds, but ÁSZ found that it invested through a “structure that was essentially intransparent and made it almost impossible to assess the real value of the assets”.
According to the draft report, this huge amount of money was badly invested, which has already led to a significant reduction in some of the assets. Meanwhile, companies linked to the circle of the son of György Matolcsy, the recently outgoing central bank governor, have benefited from the money.
Here are the main findings of ÁSZ:
According to ÁSZ, Optima had built up an extremely complex network of companies across countries, for which the audit found no rational justification.
It did so by involving private equity funds, contrary to the objectives of its founders.
The Foundation’s curators had not developed an adequate system of controls over the management of Optima and its companies.
Optima risked the assets, investing hundreds of billions of forints in two foreign real estate companies, for which it also contracted bank loans. These real estate companies have lost much of their value since the purchase, and as a result, the Foundation has lost a considerable amount of money on the purchase.
In addition, Optima has also raised almost HUF 130 billion (about 326 million EUR at the current exchange rate) from the state-owned Neumann János University Foundation through a debt issue, for which it has committed to repurchase but has been unable to do so.
A significant amount of the assets assigned to the foundation, amounting to many billions of forints, was contracted with a group of interests linked to the son of the former governor of the central bank, György Matolcsy.
The document in Direkt36’s possession is a draft report, based on an extensive investigation, which was shared with relevant actors to respond to the findings of the auditors. ÁSZ did not respond to our questions about the content of the draft, saying only that “comments from those involved in the investigation are being dealt with, and ÁSZ will publish the reports on the audits within days.”
The MNB, which has been headed by former finance minister Mihály Varga since the beginning of March, said that “following the new leadership of the central bank, a new board of trustees has been appointed to head the Pallas Athéné Domus Meriti Foundation” and a new CEO has been appointed to Optima Befektetési Ltd. According to the MNB, an important task for the new management is to “conduct an investigation covering all legal possibilities and areas to investigate the operations of the Foundation and Optima Ltd.
Following the publication of the article, the Neumann János University Foundation stated that, contrary to ÁSZ’s findings, “there is no damage, no irregularities have occurred”. They added that it was not true that the bond deal with Optima would not be fulfilled. “Constructive negotiations are ongoing between the parties regarding the repurchase, and an agreement is expected as a result,” the foundation wrote.
We contacted the other key figures listed in the draft report — including György Matolcsy and several former members of the Board of Trustees — but received no response. György Matolcsy’s son, Ádám, said in response to our questions that “I would like to inform you that I have no personal knowledge of the contents of the ÁSZ investigation, and I only learned about it from the press.” He added that “I am not a party to the investigation, so I am not in a position to comment on the substance of the matter, and it would not be my job to do so.”
According to Miklós Ligeti, the legal director of Transparency International Hungary, ÁSZ should have launched an investigation not now, but in 2016 at the latest. “On the 8th of April 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled that the assets of the MNB foundations are public money and that they perform a public function. This means that their management should have been investigated by the public authorities from that time at the latest, but they have not done so,” Ligeti said.
According to Ligeti, anyone who used MNB money for purposes other than those required by law committed embezzlement or misappropriation. And anyone who knew about it — for example, other state entities that could control the use of the money — was an accomplice. “Whether that conspiratorial conduct is criminal, misconduct in office, or culpable misconduct, or perhaps just dereliction of duty, the last of those certainly stands, but that would have to be the subject of separate investigations.”
Matolcsy’s people, public funds
In 2014, the Hungarian National Bank established six foundations under the name of Pallas Athéné Foundations, to which it made available a total of HUF 266.4 billion (nearly 670 million EUR at the current exchange rate). The officially announced objectives at the time were, among others, to support education, science, and the training of economic and financial professionals. In 2019, the foundations have essentially been merged into one foundation, the Pallas Athéné Domus Meritis (PADME).
The board of trustees of the foundation included several people close to György Matolcsy. One of these was Norbert Csizmadia, who worked with Matolcsy in the Ministry of National Economy after 2010, but their acquaintance goes back even further. Csizmadia had already worked on a study with the future central bank governor in 2007. Another member of the foundation’s board of trustees was Imre Réfy, who was deputy mayor of the village of Balatonakarattya, led by György Matolcsy’s ex-wife.
A separate company was already set up in 2015 to manage the foundation’s assets. Under normal market conditions, the purpose of such a structure is to have a professional company manage the assets, support the preparation of investment decisions, operate and develop the foundation’s buildings. That asset management company was Optima Befektetési Ltd. (formerly Pallas Athéné Domus Optima), which, according to ÁSZ’s draft report, had access to funds from two other sources in addition to the central bank’s foundational assets.
One was the MBH Bank, partly owned by the Hungarian state, from which it obtained a loan worth 170 million EUR (nearly HUF 70 billion at the current exchange rate), and the other was the Foundation for the Neumann János University of Kecskemét (NJE Foundation), which was established by the Hungarian state in 2020. This foundation exercises the ownership and maintenance rights of the Neumann János University of Kecskemét. The NJE Foundation bought bonds worth HUF 127.5 billion (about 320 million EUR at the current exchange rate) from Optima, essentially giving the company a loan.
According to ÁSZ, Optima had assets worth nearly 500 billion HUF (about 1.25 billion EUR at the current exchange rate), a significant part of which, more than 400 billion HUF (about 1 billion EUR at the current exchange rate), was public money. It is not clear from the draft report what the source of the rest of the amount was, but from the available data, it seems likely that the auditors were referring to a loan from the partly state-owned MBH bank.
They started a real estate business
Optima, which manages the foundation’s assets, used a large part of this huge sum to acquire stakes in two foreign real estate investment companies. According to the draft report, at the end of 2023, the Optima group owned 62.61% of the shares in the Polish company GTC S.A. and 33% and 25% of the shares in Ultima Capital S.A., a Swiss company. To achieve this, according to ÁSZ, Optima also used external funding. “In addition to the endowment, the OPTIMA Group financed the foreign investments with debt, thereby substantially increasing their risk.”
Válasz Online reported that GTC paid out a total of 42 billion HUF in EUR (105 million EUR at the current exchange rate) by 2024 for properties managed by Quartz Fund Management, a subsidiary of István Száraz, a friend of György Matolcsy’s son, Ádám Matolcsy. The properties include an office building in Debrecen and a design hotel in Budapest’s 1st district. According to the article, these real estate deals have in many cases generated billions in profits for the funds managed by Quartz.
Swiss-based Ultima Capital S.A. was reported by Telex in January 2025 as a company involved in the operation and development of luxury real estate in Europe, among other things. It is not doing so very successfully, since in 2022 and 2023 Ultima was loss-making, and in the first half of 2024 these losses increased. On its website, Ultima lists its Swiss, French, and Greek properties, including a villa with a pool in Corfu, a property with a private cinema in the Swiss Alps, and a French ski hotel, all illustrated with plenty of pictures.
The decision to buy the GTC was taken by the members of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees in 2020, according to ÁSZ, on the basis of an inadequate pre-decision document with glaring professional errors in less than 5 hours. This was all the time the chairman gave the members of the Board of Trustees to send in their votes. The auditors added that the pre-decision document had indicated the return on this investment, but that the calculation had not been backed up by any supporting material.
„However, the calculation of the returns presented at ÁSZ’s request was found to be economically unreasonable, and therefore the preparatory material — and therefore the decision taken — was not sufficiently well founded,” the draft report states.
One of Optima’s private equity funds, set up just two weeks earlier, also participated in the purchase. ÁSZ drew particular attention to this: according to the draft report, this “raises the possibility, in the knowledge of the rules applicable to private equity funds, that the purpose of its creation may have been to hide the investment from public interest.”
According to the draft report, the Optima Group paid 31 percent, nearly 60 billion HUF (about 150 million EUR at the current exchange rate), more for the stake than its stock market value. ÁSZ said this was an unjustified premium. After the purchase, the share price fell further, according to ÁSZ, and by the end of 2024 the value of the package had fallen by more than 160 billion HUF (400 million EUR at the current exchange rate).
Another major foreign investment of the Optima group, Ultima Capital, also made significant losses, the company’s share price falling 20% by December 2024. According to ÁSZ, this investment was questionable from the beginning, as it is risky to invest such assets only in the real estate market. Moreover, the Optima group had promised some minority shareholders of Ultima that it would buy shares from them. In doing so, it committed CHF 250 million (currently around 104 billion HUF) for the years 2024 and 2025.
Foundation in “imminent danger”
After the investments criticized by ÁSZ, the foundation, which was stuffed with hundreds of billions of HUF of taxpayers’ money, was in trouble. The draft report quotes a letter written by the supervisory board of the foundation in January 2025 to the then president of the Hungarian National Bank, György Matolcsy: “The operation and solvency of the foundation is in immediate danger.”
Matolcsy also reports significant financial difficulties in a quoted letter sent to the President of ÁSZ:
“In view of the revenue and resource possibilities and the level of liabilities, it appears that without external assistance, there is no possibility at this stage to find a satisfactory solution to the current situation of the PADME/Optima group.”
According to ÁSZ, the audit of PADME’s management found that the Foundation’s reports do not give a true and fair view of the overall management of the organization. ÁSZ also pointed this out to the Ministry of Finance, which, after some extraordinary investigations, obliged the Foundation’s auditor to withdraw the 2021, 2022, and 2023 reports.
Running for their money
The Optima group was already facing significant financial difficulties at the beginning of 2024 after acquiring a stake in the real estate companies. This can be seen from the part of the ÁSZ document detailing one of Optima’s additional fund-raising, the purchase of bonds from the Neumann János University Foundation (NJE Foundation).
Optima has also signed a repayment option agreement and commitment letters with the NJE Foundation for the bonds purchased in three parts, totaling 127.5 billion HUF (about 320 million EUR at the current exchange rate). In this way, ÁSZ considers that Optima created the impression that the bonds were in fact liquid, i.e., the Foundation could easily buy them back.
In fact, in January 2024, when the NJE Foundation wanted to convert the bonds into cash, Optima was unable to complete the redemption. According to the draft report, negotiations between the Optima Group and the University Foundation on the retiming of the repayment were still ongoing in January 2025. According to the draft, ÁSZ believes that the full repayment is unlikely to be made.
Ádám Matolcsy’s circle
ÁSZ also highlights overlaps between the parties involved in the transaction. As of 2020, the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the NJE Foundation and the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Pallas Athéné Domus Meriti Foundation were the same person, Norbert Csizmadia. Csizmadia previously worked with György Matolcsy in the Ministry of National Economy and in the Central Bank as well.
The draft report of ÁSZ also covers billions of forints of investments by several companies founded by Optima. These details show that part of the Hungarian National Bank’s foundation money went to the circle of György Matolcsy’s son.
One such item, presented in detail, is the BOKK investment, a real estate investment project in Balatonakarattya. According to ÁSZ, a company set up by Optima contracted with companies belonging to the same circle of interests to carry out a large part of this multi-billion HUF project. Around 4.6 billion HUF (11.5 million EUR at the current exchange rate) was paid to this group.
Behind the beneficiary interest (Raw Development Kft., Somlai Property Kft.) there is Bálint Somlai, a Hungarian entrepreneur who owes a significant part of his wealth to orders from the MNB. Somlai belongs to the circle of former central bank governor’s son, Ádám Matolcsy. Adam Matolcsy previously confirmed to Direkt36 that he and Somlai are in the same group of friends.
Mr. Somlai did not respond to our request, and Ádám Matolcsy has now said that “I regret that I am not in a position to answer your questions about personal or business relations with Mr. Somlai, as these are private matters.”
The rise of Bálint Somlai, his business activities, and his relationship with the son of the former central bank governor were previously reported in detail by Direkt36. We have presented the expensive sports cars used by Somlai and Ádám Matolcsy and revealed in detail how the construction costs of the Postapalota, also linked to the Hungarian National Bank and built by Somlai’s interests, were soaring.
According to the draft report of ÁSZ, a very similar case to the BOKK investment occurred in a project of another company founded by Optima. This concerned the Burg Hotel in the 1st district of Budapest. In this case, almost 99% of the total value of the contracts, 8.5 billion HUF (more than 21 million EUR at the current exchange rate), was contracted with companies owned by Mr. Somlai.
At the end of the draft report, ÁSZ makes recommendations to the heads of the audited organizations over several pages. Among other things, it recommends that the chairman of the foundation’s board of trustees should ensure that the company structure is simplified and that a control system is put in place that covers all the organizations that actually invest the foundation’s assets.
The document draws attention to the fact that the heads of the audited organizations are required to prepare an action plan for ÁSZ in relation to the findings. ÁSZ also refers to the legal provision that if the action plan is not sent on time or is not acceptable, the head of the audited organization may be subject to criminal or disciplinary proceedings.
According to the ÁSZ Act, ÁSZ sends its findings to the heads of the audited organizations, who have 15 days to comment on them in writing. ÁSZ replies within 30 days. ÁSZ’s final reports are public and available on its website.
Manoeuvre in the final days of Matolcsy’s presidency
Before the end of György Matolcsy’s term as MNB President, there were strange transactions around the Optima Group.
According to an article in 24.hu on the 7th of March, during the last days of György Matolcsy’s presidency, a subsidiary of Optima, Optima Investment Fund Management Ltd., changed its owner. According to the paper, the change of ownership took place on the 28th of February, and the new owner is the Central European III Private Equity Fund. This fund is one of the funds managed by Quartz, a fund manager linked to István Száraz, who is a member of Ádám Matolcsy’s circle.
György Stofa, another businessman associated with Ádám Matolcsy, the then CEO of Optima Investment Ltd., told 24.hu that there was no change in the actual ownership of Optima Investment Fund Management Ltd. According to Stofa, ‘only a structuring within the own portfolio took place,’ as the old and the new owner belong to the same circle of interests.
On 11 March, 24.hu reported that one of the first measures taken by the new central bank governor, Mihály Varga, was to make immediate personnel changes. The MNB told the newspaper:
“The MNB’s new management has appointed a new Board of Trustees at the head of the Pallas Athéné Domus Meriti Foundation and a new CEO at the head of Optima Investment Ltd., owned by the Foundation.”
Miklós Ligeti, the legal director of Transparency International Hungary, recalled that when Transparency launched its first lawsuits against the MNB over the management of foundations, Matolcsy’s team defended themselves by saying that the management of foundations generates profits.
“It’s one thing that it has now been revealed that it is actually making a huge loss. The real problem is that the MNB’s assets were not designed for this, they should not have been used for such purposes,” Ligeti said.
“If someone decides to use cash to heat the fireplace with their own private money, it’s silly, but they can do it, it’s not forbidden. But if you are the president of the MNB and you decide to use the public money entrusted to you either to burn it in the fireplace or to buy luxury hotels in Switzerland, that is a crime, because it is not your money and it is not meant for that purpose,” the legal director added.
Dániel Szőke
Graduated from Eötvös Loránd University at 2013 as a librarian scientist. As a freelancer he worked with 444.hu news-site for several years, and in 2020 attended Transparency International’s mentor program for investigative journalists. In January 2021 he started to work as an intern, and since September 2021 he is a full-time journalist of Direkt36.
Szabolcs Panyi
Szabolcs graduated from Eötvös Loránd University where he studied Hungarian language and literature. Between 2013 and 2018, he was an editor and political reporter at Index.hu. At Arizona State University, he studied investigative journalism on a Fulbright Fellowship in 2017-2018. In the fall of 2018, he joined Direkt36, where he mainly works on stories related to national security and foreign policy. Meanwhile, he helped launch VSquare.org, a Warsaw-based cross-border investigative journalism initiative for the Visegrád region, where he is currently leading the Central Eastern European investigations. He received the Quality Journalism Award and the Transparency-Soma Award four times each, and he was also shortlisted for the European Press Prize in 2018 and 2021.