A resident in the apartment building at 52 Andrássy út recently wrote a letter of complaint to Ferenc Gyurcsány, the Prime Minister, complaining that CD Hungary, a company that lets exclusive diplomatic residences in Buda, had bought the building in which he lived from Terézváros District Council. The resident complained that he would have liked to buy his apartment from the local authority, which he could have done at a discounted price. But he was not given the opportunity to do so. And he suspects that the transaction itself was suspect. It was certainly unusual: the local authority handed over two  buildings, 8 and 52 Andrássy út, both protected monuments, with a total surface area of some 6,000 square metres, in exchange for a two apartment house on Tárogató út, a mezzanine level on Lendvay utca and a total of HUF57m in cash. The beneficiary also undertook to restore the two listed buildings to their former glory.

"We don't want to kick anyone out, we're going to reach an agreement with every lessee," claimed Zsolt Szigeti, the CEO of CD Hungary, which has interests the lengths of Andrássy út, the most prestigious boulevard in Pest.

"The deal involving 52 and 8 Andrássy is the final act in a series of unlawful transactions that has been going on since 2002. The Socialist-led Teréváros council has been selling off the protected monuments of Andrássy út to shadowy companies, whose ownership changes on a daily basis," said Zsolt Gyenge, leader of the Fidesz becnches in the district assembly, adding that every building had been sold off without an open tender, meaning that there had been no opportunity for residents or other investors to get involved, despite a rule requiring Terézváros to issue a tender for all transactions exceeding HUF200m in value. The local authority had foregone billions of forints with these transactions, he said.

Even the National Audit Office (ÁSZ) has voiced concerns in a report issued in February. Its concerns appear to revolve around the sale of 19 and 23 Andrássy út. They were sold for a total of HUF725m in 2003 to Leuven Kft, a company with a total capitalisation of HUF3m, and which fell into Spanish hands shortly after the sale was executed. "We had to sell the listed buildings on Andrássy út because we don't have billions of forints to spare for their restoration," said György Fürst, the Socialist deputy mayor of Terézváros.

But the council is obliged to restore these buildings. A 1991 law specified that local authorities could acquire protected monuments on condition that they restored them within ten years. "Issuing tenders would have been a waste of time. Few of the bidders are serious, they just back out of the deal. We wouldn't have got more than the HUF3-4bn that we've earned through private sales since the end of 2002," according to Fürst. The sum is around a third of the council's total income from property transaction over the past three years. In Fürst's view, these transactions have been instrumental in balancing Terézváros's HUF13-14bn annual budget.