Fact-check: 'The richest people in the region are all many times wealthier than Lőrinc Mészáros'

Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister's Office was the guest of honour at this year's Csillagpont Fesztivál, a meeting of Hungarian Reformed youth in Zánka. A young man confronted the minister with the state of healthcare and education in Hungary, and contrasted this with the enrichment of Lőrinc Mészáros (Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's childhood best friend) and István Tiborcz, (the PM's son-in-law) commenting that the spectacular increase in their wealth was sinful and incompatible with Christian values.

Gulyás responded at length (you can read our article on this here), and we would like to highlight a particular detail of what he said, which is especially interesting because Hungarian government politicians do not usually talk about this. Gulyás said that the wealth of Lőrinc Mészáros is absolutely fine, and by the way, in a regional comparison isn’t even outstanding, in fact:

“If we look at the richest people in the region, there are people everywhere who are many times wealthier than Lőrinc Mészáros or Sándor Csányi (...) Hungarian billionaires are significantly poorer than the Poles, the Ukrainians, and the Czechs.”

As the wealth of the world's billionaires is regularly covered by the international financial press, verifying this claim is not too difficult. According to Forbes magazine's authoritative, up-to-date top list, just as Gulyás mentioned, the richest people in Hungary today are Sándor Csányi and Lőrinc Mészáros, with an estimated wealth of $1.6 billion and $1.3 billion respectively. Let's have a look at the richest people in the region, starting with the countries highlighted by the minister:

Poland: Michal Solowow, $6.8 billion

Ukraine: Rinat Akhmetov, $5.7 billion

Czech Republic: Renata Kellnerova, $16.9 billion

Compared to them, the phrase " significantly poorer" is indeed a good description of the wealthiest Hungarians. But let's look further afield to neighbouring countries as, in principle, "there are people everywhere who are many times wealthier than Lőrinc Mészáros".

Slovakia: Ivan Khrenko, $1.7 billion

Romania: Ion Țiriac, $2.1 billion

Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia: there are currently no billionaires in either country

Due to its more fortunate historical background, and for the sake of fairness, we left out Austria (where Mark Mateschitz, the majority owner of Red Bull is the richest with $40.8 billion).

So according to the Forbes top list, the wealthiest Slovaks and Romanians are certainly not "many times wealthier" than Lőrinc Mészáros or Sándor Csányi, and the wealthiest Serbs, Croats and Slovenians are all poorer than them.