The scandal surrounding the Socialist managers of Budapest’s 19th district has reached a new stage. Csaba Lackner, former 19th-district councillor of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), now an independent, claims that Krisztian Kranitz – the director of the district’s property management company – used cocaine, as evidenced by a recently released video.
In a recent programme (Informator) on Hungarian television channel HirTv, “the driver for the left wing” claimed that he had transported Socialist politicians of the 19th district to cocaine parties. The Hungarian 888.hu news portal has obtained some video footage (shot at night). According to the portal’s information, the footage records as Csaba Lackner, former Socialist councillor involved in the cocaine scandal, says that Krisztian Kranitz (Krinyo) sniffed cocaine in a restaurant’s bathroom during a party thrown by a friend. Kranitz, who has been subjected to an investigation on suspicion of graft, is now the director of the property management company of the 19th district.
In the footage recorded in the evening on 8 June 2019, Lackner says that they used drugs in the toilet.
A few minutes later, Mr Lackner names the drug they used, when the TV host asks him about Mr Kranitz:
“It’s up to you, I’m just saying, but I just can’t get over this programme of yours, about Kranitz.”
“What porgramme? On the coke stuff?”
“What coke stuff?'”
“We were talking about cocaine, weren’t we?”
888 recalls that the district’s leftist leaders have, for a long time, turned a blind eye to an earlier video where Mr Lackner, or someone very similar to him, is seen swinging around a bag full of white powder. At first Socialist district councillor Sandor Burany (member of the Dialogue (Parbeszed) party’s parliamentary group) and then Socialist Mayor Peter Gajda reluctantly admitted that the unknown stranger drying the white powder and pulling out neat strips does bear a striking resemblance to Csaba Lackner.
Moreover, the audio recording obtained by the portal proves that news reports regarding Mr Kranitz’s cocaine use probably came as little or no surprise to Mayor Peter Gajda because, according to Mr Lackner, the mayor had been notified about Mr Kranicz’s drug problem.
Last year the daily Magyar Nemzet and HirTV have published several recordings regarding the 19th-district scandal. These show the Socialist politician swinging around a bag of white powder and talking about how to “make” around 100 million forints (278 thousand euros) a year.