There is no place in the City Assembly for corporate lobbyists, Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest, said. „It’s really appalling how politicians who purport to being opposition candidates want to send lobbyists linked to companies suspected of graft and cartel activity to the City Assembly,” the mayor wrote on Facebook, citing the example of Péter Magyar, whose newly formed conservative Tisza Party, he insisted, had placed a legal advisor of a company which faced cartel accusations under competition office proceedings second on its Budapest election list. Karácsony also accused election rival Dávid Vitézy, who is backed by the conservative green LMP party, of being linked to the manager of a car-sharing company owned by „an oligarch close to” the ruling Fidesz party, under investigation for corruption and money laundering. He added that the company had unsuccessfully lobbied the capital for regulations that served its own interests. He called on Magyar and Vitézy to remove these people from their party election lists.
Vitézy responded as saying that the election list headed by Karácsony included 14th district mayor Csaba Horváth, „who himself was a suspect in two serious corruption cases”. „To then criticise us for having the successful leader of a car-sharing company who has proven himself on the market on our list is precisely an example of the party political swamp Budapest needs to be freed from,” he said on Facebook. The City Assembly needs experts who have proven themselves in their given field rather than politicians accused of crime, Vitézy said.