Lajos Simicska (born 28 January 1960) is a former Hungarian

business magnate A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

, a former politician of

Fidesz Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (; ) is a national-conservative political party in Hungary led by Viktor Orbán. It has increasingly identified as illiberal. Originally formed in 1988 under the name of Alliance of Young Democrats () as ...

, and he was the head of APEH, Hungary's internal revenue service between 1998–1999, during the first government of

Viktor Orbán Viktor Mihály Orbán (; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been the 56th prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has also led the Fidesz political party since 200 ...

. He was the ninth richest person in Hungary in 2016 (dropped to 49th in 2020). He had extensive media interests, which included '' Magyar Nemzet'', the number one daily conservative newspaper, the radio station Lánchíd Rádió, the weekly magazine Heti Válasz and the television network Hír TV. According to the Influence Barometer, in 2014 he was the 3rd most influential person in Hungary. He has a son Ádám Lajos Simicska who is also a businessman. The public considered him one of Fidesz 's main allies and beneficiaries. He was a member of the

István Bibó István Bibó (7 August 1911, Budapest – 10 May 1979, Budapest) was a Hungary, Hungarian lawyer, civil servant, politician and political theorist. Life During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Hungarian Revolution he acted as the Minister ...

vocational college, which later served as the core of

. Afterwards he became the treasurer of Fidesz, and between 1998–1999 he was the president of APEH. As a businessman, he became the owner of Közgép and the CEO of Mahir, and the opposition regularly criticized the fact that his companies won significantly more state tenders during the rule of Fidesz.

The G-Day and the "Orbán-Simicska War"

At the beginning of 2015 he had made a public vulgar statement about Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, likening him to ''geci'' (the Hungarian word for

semen Semen, also known as seminal fluid, is a bodily fluid that contains spermatozoon, spermatozoa which is secreted by the male gonads (sexual glands) and other sexual organs of male or hermaphrodite, hermaphroditic animals. In humans and placen ...

); this event became known by the shorthand 'G-day' and sparked the O1G protest movement. After the fallout, his companies did not win any more public tenders from the state and eventually his main company, Közgép was excluded from public tenders for 3 years.

Aftermath

As a consequence of the fallout with the Hungarian Prime Minister

, Simicska funded the

Jobbik The Jobbik – Movement for a Better Hungary (, ), commonly known as Jobbik (), and previously known as Conservatives () between 2023 and 2024, is a Conservatism, conservative List of political parties in Hungary, political party in Hungary. Ori ...

in the 2018 election which at the time was a far-right party. After Viktor Orbán won a third consecutive parliamentary supermajority in the 2018 Hungarian parliamentary election, Simicska shut down the newspaper ''Magyar Nemzet'' which had been the top conservative newspaper, and had had an 80 year history in print. He also shut down Lánchíd Rádió. Shortly afterward, Simicska closed or sold all of his remaining holdings.

References

1960 births Living people Hungarian businesspeople Fidesz politicians Hungarian billionaires {{Hungary-business-bio-stub