Part I — Situation overview

The asset-management foundation operating the Mathias Corvinus Collegium ceased to exist on 31 July 2026, and along with it a series of public-interest asset-management foundations performing non-higher-education public tasks — in public discourse, KEKVAs. The legal basis of the termination is Act XVIII of 2026; in the case of MCC the founder’s decision was taken on behalf of the Hungarian state by the Prime Minister’s Office, and the notice of the termination also appeared in the Hungarian Official Gazette. The magnitude of the body of assets is significant on the basis of press reports: from May 2020 onwards the state transferred to this single foundation 10 per cent each of the shares of Mol Nyrt. and Richter Gedeon Nyrt., real estate portfolios in several stages, and between 2020 and 2025 a total of about 182.8 billion forints in cash. The estimates that entered MIAK’s press monitor put the total body of assets of the KEKVAs concerned at an order of magnitude of around three thousand billion forints — this is an estimate, not official data, and that is precisely one of the starting points of this post.

The key actor of the implementation is a new institution: the settlement commissioner. This is the person to whom creditors’ claims have to be submitted — at the MCC foundation Veres Ildikó was appointed — who takes over the foundation’s assets, documents, accounting and tax records under a formal record, and who, on the basis of a government decision, may sell on the market the asset elements returning to the state, among them the Richter and Mol holdings and the ownership shares behind Libri, Mandiner and InfoRádió. The procedural deadlines are tight: the boards had to prepare an itemised statement — essentially an interim balance sheet — by 14 July 2026, attaching the last accounting report and the list of documents that may not be destroyed or that are classified. In the case of an incomplete submission the settlement commissioner and the exerciser of founder’s rights may call for the deficiency to be remedied within three days. The board members each declare individually as to the completeness of the assets and documents handed over, and for missing the deadlines they bear liability for damages under the general rules of civil law. If the settlement commissioner finds the earlier contracts inexpedient or overpriced, a criminal complaint may be lodged until 31 October 2026.

MIAK’s reading: the fundamental problem of the KEKVA construction was not that it operated in foundation form, but that discretion over public assets escaped budgetary and parliamentary control. The dismantling is therefore a restoring operation — but in the present structure the same risk may return with the sign reversed. Today, per foundation, a single designated person has wide discretionary powers over a body of assets unknown in order of magnitude, with tight deadlines and without a public reporting obligation. This does not mean that anything bad is happening; it means that under the present arrangement it will not be possible to establish afterwards whether it happened well. What was an error in the outsourcing — wide discretion without publicity — is not permissible in the taking back either.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s proposals it is worth fixing the conceptual frame. According to the famous formula of Robert Klitgaard (former professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, one of the founding authors of anti-corruption policy), corruption appears where a monopoly position and discretionary power meet without accountability — the institution of the single-person settlement commissioner with wide discretion is precisely such a structure, and the missing factor is accountability. The volume Corruption and Government by Susan Rose-Ackerman (professor at Yale University, a leading researcher of the economic analysis of corruption) sharpens the frame for the very moment that now follows. The sale of state assets is the riskiest phase, because the valuation, the shaping of the circle of bidders and the advisory roles are all points of discretion, where a conflict of interest is not the exception but the default case. And Thomas Piketty (French economist, a leading researcher of long-term data on wealth inequality) gives the order of magnitude: over the past forty years the ratio of net public wealth to private wealth has, in the wake of the privatisation waves, declined durably in the developed countries. It is this indicator that determines how much room for manoeuvre a state retains. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

📖 Source: Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption; Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform; Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes four measurable measures. None of them calls into question the dismantling of the KEKVA system — each serves to make the dismantling defensible afterwards as well.

3.1 An itemised, public inventory of the returning assets (within 60 days)

The itemised statements prepared by the boards by 14 July 2026 and the takeover records of the settlement commissioners are not public today. MIAK proposes that the government build from these a single public asset register broken down by foundation: type of asset element, identifier (in the case of real estate the land registry number, for securities the series and number of units), book value and — where it exists — market value, the date of takeover, and the aggregate state of creditors’ claims. Updating should be quarterly and the format machine-readable. This proposal follows directly from the A1 public money dashboard programme point, and is the extension of the G19 radical transparency requirement to the asset side. A verifiable figure would thus replace the three-thousand-billion estimate — which is also in the government’s interest, because the estimate can be attacked both upwards and downwards.

3.2 A sales procedure promulgated in advance for the asset elements that can be taken to market (within 60 days)

The settlement commissioner’s statutory authorisation extends to market sales, but no promulgated norm regulates the details of the procedure. MIAK asks that the framework should appear before the first significant transaction: an open tender as the main rule, at least two mutually independent valuations for holdings not listed on the stock exchange, a disqualifying conflict-of-interest rule for advisers and valuers, and the subsequent publication of the contract and of the identity of the buyer. For the listed Mol and Richter packages the timing of the sale is a separate question, because throwing a ten per cent block onto the market has a price effect in itself — for this a public, previously announced schedule is what is needed. The procedural framework carries the A2 public procurement transparency logic over to asset sales, and is the direct application of the G6 programme point against rent-seeking.

3.3 A public reporting regime for the settlement commissioners and the separation of media holdings (within 90 days)

The settlement commissioner today owes an account to the exerciser of founder’s rights. According to MIAK this is not enough: the commissioner should prepare a quarterly public report on the assets entrusted to them, on the procedures under way and on the criminal complaints made or considered — because of the 31 October 2026 deadline for complaints the first report has to appear this year. The media holdings require separate treatment: in the case of Libri’s book publishing and retail network, of Mandiner and of InfoRádió, MIAK’s position is independent of political side — the state should not be a lasting owner of media of conservative or of any other editorial orientation. Temporary state ownership should therefore be accompanied by a compulsory asset-management separation and a fixed exit deadline of at most twelve months (KU2, A7).

3.4 A continuity guarantee for the public tasks under way (within 30 days)

The foundations concerned also operated scholarship, talent development and research programmes whose beneficiaries are private individuals and research groups. MIAK proposes that within 30 days the government should publish which commitments under way live on, with which legal successor, and with what deadline — for interruption in the middle of a semester punishes not the former boards but the students and the researchers. The continuity list follows the KU5 logic of open culture financing: whoever receives support from public money has the conditions and the fate of that support made public.

The common principle of the four proposals is simple. In Klitgaard’s frame the present situation does not eliminate discretion, it merely relocates it — from the board to the settlement commissioner (see 6.4.1). Such a relocation improves the system only if the accountability factor grows in the meantime. A public inventory, a promulgated procedure, regular reporting: these three elements are what make the taking back more than a change of owner.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Economy The itemised inventory and the promulgated sales regime take the assets to market at a better price and with less legal risk The public schedule also gives information to market players; badly timed it may cause price pressure on the Mol and Richter packages
Society The fate of the public assets becomes trackable; scholarship holders and researchers are placed in a predictable position The publicity of the inventory also brings protracted legal disputes to the surface, which slows the process
Public administration The institution of the settlement commissioner creates a verifiable precedent for future asset takeovers The quarterly reporting obligation imposes an administrative burden on commissioners working to tight deadlines
Culture and media Exiting the media holdings forestalls the reproduction of state media concentration If there is no buyer, the “at most twelve months” deadline becomes untenable and leads to a forced sale

The main trade-off is tense between speed and verifiability. The statutory deadlines — the 14 July statement, the 31 October final deadline for complaints — force fast implementation, while the public inventory and tendering are time-consuming. According to MIAK’s position this tension can be resolved if publicity is tied not to the closure of the procedure but to the steps: the publication of the inventory does not wait for the sale, the report does not wait for the closure of the legal disputes. The proposal tips to the risk side if the publicity becomes formal — an aggregate statement without items, from which nothing can be verified.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed KPIs)

Four performance indicators (KPIs) are worth tracking over the next twelve months:

  1. Inventory coverage: for what percentage of the terminated KEKVAs an itemised, public asset statement is available — proposed target: 100% within sixty days.
  2. Sales publicity: at what percentage of the transactions conducted by the settlement commissioners the buyer, the consideration and the valuation were published — proposed target: 100%.
  3. Reporting discipline: whether the commissioner’s report appeared quarterly at every foundation concerned — proposed target: without omission.
  4. Public task continuity: how many scholarship or research contracts under way were broken off because of the asset takeover — proposed target: zero.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message: the dismantling of the KEKVA system is a correct aim, but in the implementation phase a single-person position with wide discretion today handles public assets without having to account publicly. MIAK therefore asks the government to publish within sixty days the itemised inventory of the returning assets and the procedural framework of the sale, to introduce within ninety days a quarterly public reporting obligation for the settlement commissioners, and to promulgate within thirty days the continuity list of the scholarship and research commitments under way.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play in this matter. Transparency, because only an estimate is available today about the order of magnitude of the assets — to speak of three thousand billion forints without a verifiable inventory is precisely the situation that MIAK objected to in the KEKVA era, only now from the other side. And accountability, because in the present structure responsibility is asymmetrical: the former board members are liable in civil law for damages in respect of the provision of data, while on the receiving side there is no equivalent, enforceable obligation of publicity. MIAK’s yardstick is here too independent of political side: it would have asked the same guarantees of the previous government when the assets were outsourced, and it asks the same of the present one at the taking back.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left band gave the most detailed description of the implementation. Telex published item by item the time series of state transfers from May 2020 to March 2025, presented the powers of the settlement commissioner and the board members’ liability for damages, and dealt separately with the point of the founding deed that would have given the remaining assets to the private founder — as well as with the fact that under the new law this provision may not be applied. HVG worked up, in two analyses behind a paywall, the asset balance sheets of the six non-university KEKVAs and the plan to gather the recovered assets into a state fund; these articles were not publicly downloadable, so here only their titles and the summary of the press monitor serve as sources.

The economic and public affairs bands concentrated primarily on the ownership consequences: the fate of the Mol and Richter holdings, and the future of Libri and Mandiner, appeared as the main questions. In this frame the story is a corporate governance and capital market matter, not a public law one — which is a legitimate viewpoint, but the question of the publicity of the procedure drops out of it.

The conservative band did not present the dismantling of the KEKVAs in a stand-alone, critical frame in these days; in earlier weeks it treated the asset recovery procedures primarily in a reading based on legal certainty and political revenge. According to MIAK this aspect is valid in itself, and it is precisely for that reason that in the present phase the public inventory and the promulgated sales procedure would be the instrument that handles the concern of both sides: the risk of abuse and the charge of political arbitrariness at the same time.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
Termination of the asset-management foundation behind MCC 31 July 2026 Telex, 2 August 2026
Legal basis of the termination Act XVIII of 2026 Telex, 2 August 2026
Settlement commissioner of the MCC foundation Veres Ildikó Telex, 2 August 2026
Transfer of the Mol and Richter share packages 10% each, May 2020 Telex, 2 August 2026
Real estate transfer in May 2020 close to HUF 6 bn Telex, 2 August 2026
Cash transfers 2020–2025 HUF 36.3 + 94.5 + 13 + 5 + 5 + 29 bn (in total approx. HUF 182.8 bn) Telex, 2 August 2026
Original founder’s contribution of the private founder HUF 2 million Telex, 2 August 2026
Deadline for the boards’ itemised statement 14 July 2026 Telex, 2 August 2026
Deadline for the call to remedy deficiencies 3 days from receipt of the submission Telex, 2 August 2026
Final deadline for the settlement commissioner’s criminal complaint 31 October 2026 Telex, 2 August 2026
Holdings that may be designated for market sale Richter, Mol, Libri, Mandiner, InfoRádió Telex, 2 August 2026
Number of non-university KEKVAs being terminated 6 HVG, 31 July 2026 (the article was not publicly downloadable)
Estimated size of the KEKVA asset mass concerned approx. HUF 3000 bn (estimate) aggregation of the MIAK press monitor, 15 and 16 July 2026

A single connection deserves highlighting: the publicly known figures are transfer data, not present value data. Part of the cash handed over since 2020 has been spent, the value of the real estate and the share packages has changed since then, and further transactions have taken place in the Libri group. The “three thousand billion” is therefore not the sum that actually returns — it is the order of magnitude about which there is today no verifiable statement. Proposal 3.1 targets precisely this gap.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the public registering of the returning assets, the tendering regime of the sale, the extension of checks and balances to the receiving side (programme point ID: A1, A2, A6, A7);
  • Economy (programme points) — action against rent-seeking in the sales phase and the measurement of wealth concentration (programme point ID: G6, G7, G19);
  • Culture (programme points) — exiting the media holdings from state ownership and the principle of open culture financing (programme point ID: KU2, KU5);
  • Education (background material) — the continuity of the scholarship and talent development programmes during the asset takeover.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

The core of Klitgaard’s analysis is that corruption is not primarily a moral but a structural question: it appears where an actor decides in a monopoly position, with wide discretionary powers and alongside weak accountability. The volume warns separately that handing a task from one organisation to another does not in itself improve the situation — if the monopoly position and the freedom of discretion remain, then the possibility of rent extraction remains too, only under a different heading. The emphasis is therefore not on changing the actor but on changing the ratio of the three factors.

Translated to the dismantling of the KEKVAs this means the following. In the earlier system discretion lay with the board, under government appointment, with weak external control. In the present system discretion lies with the settlement commissioner, under government designation, and public control is likewise missing. Monopoly and discretion are therefore unchanged, they have merely changed hands; the quality of the system can be improved only by raising the third factor, accountability. This is the whole theoretical basis of MIAK’s proposals 3.1 and 3.3 — and at the same time the argument for why these proposals are valid independently of political side.

📖 Source: Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

6.4.2 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform

One of the most detailed chapters of Rose-Ackerman’s volume deals with the sale of state assets. According to her analysis a large-volume asset transfer is a particularly risky moment because several points of discretion open up at once: who gets into the circle of pre-qualified bidders, how many competitors remain at the end, who carries out the valuation, and what interest binds the adviser to the outcome. With international examples she presents the recurring pattern in which the firm carrying out the valuation is itself interested in the transaction, or in which after privatisation the regulator subsequently changes the conditions of competition. The author’s thesis is that formal tendering is not enough in itself — the prior exclusion of conflicts of interest and subsequent publicity together give the protection.

In the Hungarian situation this means that the greatest risk arises not at the moment of termination but in the months that follow. The sale of a listed ten per cent block or of a book retail network is a transaction in which even a difference of a few per cent in the price is a difference of billions. MIAK’s proposal 3.2 is therefore not a gesture of distrust towards the settlement commissioners but a recognition that in such a transaction nobody should be left alone with the decision.

📖 Source: Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform

6.4.3 Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Piketty presents the development of net public wealth over long time series: in the years between 1950 and 1970 significant state assets accumulated in the developed states in the industrial and financial sectors, then after 1980 several large privatisation waves followed, and net state wealth came in several countries close to zero, indeed into negative territory. The lesson of the data series is not that privatisation is bad in itself, but that the ratio of public to private wealth is the result of a series of political decisions, and that this ratio determines how much room for manoeuvre a state retains in time of crisis.

The Hungarian case shows this process in condensed form. In the KEKVA construction the state moved significant public assets — stock exchange holdings, real estate, cash — into a structure outside budgetary control, and now these same assets are returning. The question of which Piketty’s data warn is: what will the purpose of the assets be after the return. If the settlement commissioners carry out a fast market sale, the end of the process will not be the restoration of public assets but a second privatisation wave — only now under a more transparent label. This is not an argument against the sale; it is an argument for the decision about the sale to come before the public, rather than being settled as a technical side thread of the procedure.

📖 Source: Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

6.5 International comparison

In the international practice of returning assets two patterns deserve attention. One is the Central European privatisation experience after the change of system: in those countries where the sale started with a public tendering regime and compulsory multiple valuations, the later legal disputes and the loss of value were perceptibly smaller than where it proceeded through a series of individual government decisions. The other is the logic of the European Union’s asset recovery directive, which in the handling of seized assets regulates not only confiscation but also the period of management: an asset management office, separate accounting, regular reporting. The Hungarian settlement commissioner construction, by comparison, details the confiscation–takeover phase, but not the publicity regime of the management.

On the question of media holdings West European practice shows an unambiguous direction: where the state has become the owner of a media company under compulsion — following bankruptcy proceedings or an asset seizure — the established solution is the placing of voting rights in trust and exit within a fixed deadline, precisely so that the exercise of ownership rights does not turn into editorial influence. MIAK’s proposal 3.3 recommends this model for the case of Libri, Mandiner and InfoRádió.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public money dashboard
  • A2 — Public procurement transparency
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A7 — Media pluralism as an institutional guarantee

Economy

  • G6 — Programme against rent-seeking and regulatory capture
  • G7 — Wealth inequality monitoring
  • G19 — Radical transparency in economic decision-making

Culture

  • KU2 — Media pluralism monitoring
  • KU5 — Cultural participation index and open culture financing

Proposed new programme point: An asset takeover publicity standard — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area: at every state asset takeover and sale, a compulsory itemised public inventory, a sales procedure promulgated in advance and a quarterly commissioner’s report, independently of the closure of the procedure.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK topic monitor, 2 August 2026 — topic 1; the source of the news items is topic 8 of the press monitor of 2 August 2026):

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption
  • 📖 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform
  • 📖 Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Note: the local file path of the books does NOT appear in the visible text of the blog — only the author and the title. The file path is an internal matter of the generation process, not the reader’s.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A1, A2, A6, A7)
  • MIAK policy area: Economy (programme points; programme point ID: G6, G7, G19)
  • MIAK policy area: Culture (programme points; programme point ID: KU2, KU5)
  • MIAK policy area: Education (background material)
  • MIAK topic monitor, 2 August 2026 — topic 1, score: 95/100

Additional public data sources:

  • National Office for the Judiciary — register of civil society organisations, foundation reports
  • Hungarian Official Gazette — the notices of termination
  • State Audit Office (ÁSZ) — asset management audit reports
  • Budapest Stock Exchange and the issuers’ share register disclosures

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