At an extraordinary meeting on Monday, the Gyergyószentmiklós local council decided to initiate the reconvening of the members’ meeting of Monturist Kft., which manages the shores of Lake Gyilkos, on June 29, the replacement of the company’s current managing director, Csaba Török, and the appointment of Attila Lukács as managing director – he announced Gyergyószentmiklós municipality.
At first glance, the decision may seem like a local business matter, in reality, however, it is another chapter of an ownership and political conflict that has been going on for years. Monturist is not a simple city company: in the company managing one of the most valuable tourist areas of Lake Gyilkos Gyergyószentmiklós is a minority owner, and the municipality of Budapest’s 5th district owns more than 80 percent.
According to the announcement of the Gyergyószentmiklós municipality on Monday, “local interests are not given sufficient weight” in the operation of Monturist, which is why the city has not been able to adequately represent the interests of its own resort around Lake Gyilkos and the local community for a long time. In the voted proposal, they put it more harshly than this, according to the Székelyhon, it was writtenCsaba Török’s activities have been subject to objections for a long time, including violations of urban planning and economic legislation.
The city already initiated the replacement of Monturist’s managing director a year ago, but this did not happen then. The documents issued by the Belváros-Lipótváros municipality, which have come into the possession of Transtelex, give a partial answer to what the specific new circumstances are, due to which the replacement of Csaba Török is now back on the agenda.
At its closed meeting on May 21, the representative body of Budapest’s 5th district adopted several resolutions related to Monturist. In one of the decisions, the board authorized Mayor Péter Szentgyörgyvölgyi to, if Gyergyószentmiklós officially initiates the replacement of Monturist’s managing director and the appointment of Attila Lukács, to support this motion on behalf of the Budapest municipality at the company’s general meeting.
At the same meeting, the representatives also gave their consent in principle to Belváros–Lipótváros selling its Monturist stake to the municipality of Gyergyószentmiklós, if the city makes an appropriate offer supported by a company evaluation. The mayor was also authorized to start negotiations on the possible transfer of the business.
The decisions in Budapest indicate that the majority owner is both open to supporting a change of management and to parting with his ownership stake in the longer term. This is a significant change compared to the fact that the disputes surrounding the company have been taking place for many years in the form of largely fruitless political and legal battles.
Gyergyószentmiklós city councilor László Bajkó told Transtelex that, as far as he knows, it was precisely these decisions in Budapest that created the conditions for the municipality to once again initiate the convening of the members’ assembly and the replacement of Csaba Török. We sent questions about the matter to the V. district municipality of Budapest, if we receive an answer, we will update our article.
The city would change leaders while a lawsuit is pending over ownership ratios
“I haven’t officially received the council decision yet. If I do, we will respond to it within the legal deadline,” Csaba Török responded to Transtelex on Monday. He added that the council can make a decision in an extraordinary meeting only in urgent cases, but in the current situation there was no reason for the extraordinary council meeting.
According to the managing director of Monturist, however, the story is legally much more complicated than it appears from the municipal announcement.
At the heart of the dispute is how much ownership the city currently has in Monturist and what rights come from that.
According to Török, based on the decision of last December’s members’ meeting, Monturist’s ownership proportions would be such that the fifth district of Budapest would have a share of around 81 percent, Gyergyószentmiklós’ share would decrease to 15.9 percent, and the remaining 4 percent would belong to the Gyilkos-tóért Egyesület. Previously, the municipality of Budapest’s 5th district had a 50.99 percent stake in the company, while the municipality of Gyergyószentmiklós owned 46.43 percent. The remaining 2.56 percent of the business was owned by Gospodăria Orășenească SA, which has since ceased to exist.
Stalls and properties at the Gyilkos lake – Photo: Kata Kádár / Transtelex
However, the company court rejected the decision on the reduction of the share capital and the settlement of ownership ratios in February, so Monturist went to court. The first hearing of the case was scheduled for October 22. As long as the lawsuit is not concluded, the issue of convening the members’ meeting is not easy either, because according to the law, an owner needs at least 25 percent share in order to initiate the convening of the members’ meeting, Török said. The city can therefore currently request the convocation, but its legal conditions are disputed.
According to the manager, the city would be able to buy it out, but that would be expensive
One of the possible solutions to the conflict surrounding Monturist would be to settle ownership relations. According to Csaba Török, for this, Gyergyószentmiklós should buy out the share of Budapest’s 5th district from the company.
The manager said that according to the latest valuation prepared at the request of the city, Monturis is worth about 660,000 euros, while a few years ago the value of the company was estimated at about 100,000 euros. Although, according to documents obtained by Transtelex, the Belváros-Lipotváros representative body gave its consent in principle to the sale of its ownership in May, according to Török, it is questionable whether the city would be able to finance the purchase. According to the manager’s estimate, the market value of Budapest’s more than 80 percent share can be around 330-350 thousand euros, i.e. approx. 1.8 million lei would be needed for the buyout.
“Budapest would sell its shares at the market price if it were to sell. I don’t think the city could pay that”
said Turk. Gyergyószentmiklós in 2026 anyway It operates from 153 million lei.
One of the recurring elements of the debate surrounding Monturist is the issue of dividends. Local representative László Bajkó previously criticized the operation of the company several times because the owners did not benefit from the profits. Török, on the other hand, claims that neither Gyergyószentmiklós, nor the fifth district of Budapest, nor the former third owner submitted an official claim for the payment of dividends.
According to him, when accepting the results of the 2025 business year, Budapest’s 5th district and the Gyilkos-tóért Egyesület also voted to keep the 197,000 lei profit in the company and use it for development. According to Türök, profits have been reinvested in operations and investments in recent years, so the claim that the owners were deprived of dividends is not correct.
While the municipality accuses the current management of Monturis in its statement of not managing the company according to local interests, and even accuses the executive of violating the law in the presentation, Török sees the conflict as being about who owns one of the most important tourist areas of Gyilkos Lake.
According to Török, Monturist has been financially stronger since 2021, and the area managed by the company is being maintained and developed, while the municipality of Gyergyószentmiklós has not done enough for the settlement of Gyilkos Lake as a whole for decades. “The Gyilkos-tó does not consist only of this 1.7-hectare Monturist area, but from the field to the field,” he said. According to him, the local government has hardly moved anything at Gyilkos Lake in recent decades, so he considers it questionable why it wants to take back control over the area managed by Monturist right now.
How did Budapest’s 5th district find itself in a decision-making situation at Lake Gyilkos?
To understand the current conflict, one must go back to the beginning of Monturist’s history. Lake Gyilkos administratively belongs to Gyergyószentmiklós, but some of the lakeside areas are not managed directly by the municipality, but by Monturist Kft., established in 1996. The company was founded by the municipalities of Gyergyószentmiklós and Budapest’s 5th district as a sister city cooperation. Gyergyó entered the company with land and Budapest with half of the money.
The construction was originally about developing one of Székelyföld’s best-known tourist destinations with Hungarian resources and local assets. In practice, however, the ownership relations already carried tensions at the time of foundation. The fifth district of Budapest became the majority owner, while the company operated in the Gyergyószentmiklós area and managed one of the city’s most valuable tourist assets.
In the following decades, several lakeside areas were removed from Monturist’s assets. The company law settlement of the previous decisions led to the fact that after the recalculation of the ownership ratios, Gyergyószentmiklós’s share would have decreased significantly, and the influence of Budapest’s 5th district would have continued to increase.
We presented it in detail in our previous articlehow did Monturist get to the point where the downtown Budapest municipality is in a decisive decision-making position in a company operating in a Györgyo resort area. The new initiative of the change of leadership is the continuation of this long-standing debate.
