BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – A company linked to an ally of Hungary’s prime minister said Tuesday it had acquired the publisher of the main opposition newspaper, which suspended publication 2 ½ weeks ago.
The Opimus Group said it bought 100 percent of the shares of Mediaworks Hungary through its fully-owned Opimus Press subsidiary at an undisclosed price. Mediaworks was owned by Vienna Capital Partners, belonging to Austrian businessman Heinrich Pecina.
Opimus has been linked to Lorinc Meszaros, a former gas fitter whose businesses greatly expanded with the help of large state contracts. He has attributed his success partly to his friendship with Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The deal, announced on the website of the Budapest Stock Exchange, seemed to confirm concerns that the sale of Mediaworks, publisher of the leftist Nepszabadsag and many other newspapers and magazines, would further diminish press diversity and increase the influence of Orban’s government over Hungarian media.
“A huge media company has just gotten closer to (Orban’s) Fidesz party,” Gabor Polyak, a lawyer who leads the Hungarian watchdog group Mertek Media Monitor, said.