7. Dynastic State Capture
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- 2026
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Abstract
In this chapter, I explore the concept of dynastic state capture—a form of grand corruption in which a single family comes to dominate state institutions, converting political power into private wealth. Drawing on the case of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, I examine how familial networks mobilize formal authority, manipulate legal systems, and rely on both official channels and informal ties to divert public resources for their own benefit. Unlike more conventional forms of state capture driven by corporate or political elites, dynastic state capture intertwines personal loyalty, patrimonial practices, and long-term wealth accumulation across generations. It blends the appearance of rational-legal bureaucracy with the underlying logic of neopatrimonial governance. Ultimately, this phenomenon distorts the state’s redistributive function, undermines democratic institutions, and entrenches enduring family empires that operate simultaneously within public and private realms.
State Capture
The presidency of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who led Tunisia from 1987 until his ousting during the Tunisian Revolution in 2011, was characterized not only by authoritarianism and corruption but also by significant enrichment and empowerment of his family and in-laws. In particular, his second wife Leïla Trabelsi and her extended family became infamous for accumulating wealth and influence. The so-called Trabelsi clan members took over the most lucrative sectors of the Tunisian economy, using granted monopolies by the state and winning favorable contracts through their political connections. They also frequently seized private businesses under dubious pretenses. Although not as publicly scrutinized as the Trabelsis, Ben Ali’s own close relatives also benefited from his power. At the height of his empire, at least 662 firms were identified as owned by the Ben Ali family, all of which were subsequently confiscated in the aftermath of the “Jasmine Revolution” (Rijkers et al., 2017). The state also had a significant role in supporting these enterprises. The introduction of stringent regulations restricted investment, thereby stifling competition and favoring specific actors within the most lucrative economic sectors, including telecommunications, real estate, construction, and air transport. It is not surprising then that approximately 88% of the net profit generated by firms associated with Ben Ali came from these industries.
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The regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali is widely considered a textbook case of state capture, particularly in its later years. State capture refers to a type of grand corruption in which powerful interest groups gain control over state institutions and manipulate the processes through which laws and policies are formed and resources allocated, all to serve their own particularistic interests (Dávid-Barrett, 2023). By altering laws and institutions, state capture shapes the rules of the game under which the entire society operates. Consequently, its social impact is broad and lasting. State capture occurs during the formulation of laws and policies (the input side) rather than through the execution of established policies (the output side), which is typical of other forms of corruption (Hellman & Kaufmann, 2001). State capture manifests in two distinct forms: oligarchical or corporate state capture and political or party state capture (Innes, 2014; Martin, 2020). In oligarchical state capture, powerful business figures (clients) co-opt state institutions (agents) and manipulate policies to extract public resources for personal gain. In political state capture, political actors take control of the state to establish a political monopoly, even determining the fate of oligarchs. In state capture, corruption is written in laws and policies.
The situation involving the Ben Ali family illustrates not only a state captured by economic or political elites but also one controlled by an informal network centered on a single ruling family. I refer to this phenomenon as dynastic state capture—a form of corruption in which familial power infiltrates and subordinates both public institutions and private enterprises. In such cases, the family’s informal authority transcends formal governance structures, ultimately consolidating control over the state itself. Scholars agree that there is a pressing need for both theoretical and empirical research to develop a clearer understanding of the variations in state capture (Carpenter & Moss, 2013; Dávid-Barrett, 2023). By integrating the concept of family into this framework, we may gain deeper insights into this complex issue. This form of family corruption manifests at the central authority in society and involves the extraction of vast amounts of resources. This phenomenon indicates the re-emergence (or continued existence) of the patrimonial organization within contemporary bureaucracies, with a special focus on dynasty-building (Collins, 2011).
The primary means of coordinating actors’ behavior in captured systems is through hierarchy. Corruption is concealed within formal institutions, thus hierarchy—just like in a usual bureaucracy—coordinates these activities effectively (Powell, 1990). Therefore, on paper, this corruption is legal, meaning that the actors adhere to the formal rules, so they are not violating the law, although, of course, in this grand corruption scheme, the laws have already been tailored to their needs (Kaufmann & Vicente, 2011; Fazekas & István-János, 2016). When we focus only on the surface, the fundamental processes through which captured states are organized may remind us of a modern bureaucracy. As we will see later in this chapter, in the Hungarian case of Viktor Orbán’s family, such a scenario can occur even in an advanced, so-called democracy, one that is part of the European Union. However, beneath this Potemkin-village structure, the captured system is organized informally through neopatrimonial mechanisms (Jancsics, 2024a).
The historical shift from patrimonialism to bureaucracy, first described by Weber (1922[1968]), was the most significant organizational transformation shaping the transition from medieval to industrial societies. Patrimonialism was the dominant form of social organization, based on private households and alliances among them. It even manifested as a macro-level phenomenon, where the ruler legally owned the state and treated it as personal property, with no clear distinction between public resources and family wealth. In Weber’s framework, modern bureaucratic organizations stand in stark contrast to every characteristic of patrimonialism.
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Historically, patrimonialism was regarded as a male-dominated form of organization based on interpersonal relations, unwritten rules, arbitrary discretion, memories, and informal norms. Power and authority were typically concentrated in the hands of a patriarch, whose personal influence often extended into both the private and public spheres. A key feature of these relationships was the almost unconditional personal loyalty maintained by rituals and sentiment, as well as by material dependence.
Patrimonial Households and Alliances
Although the model of personal power within this context is the family, a patrimonial household is typically comprised of more than mere kinship. It often encompasses broader arrangements that include numerous servants, armed guards, retainers, hostages, slaves, houseguests, or even household administrators or stewards. Randall Collins (2011) identified two forms of patrimonial organization: (1) patrimonial households and (2) patrimonial alliances, or pseudo-tribes. Patrimonial households grew internally by incorporating non-kin members and externally through personal alliances among heads of households. As a larger and more complex form of organization, patrimonial alliances can be illustrated through early ad-hoc warrior coalitions such as the Vikings, the Germanic tribes of the Völkerwanderung, and ancient Greek colonists of the circum-Mediterranean region, all of whom frequently cut ties with their ancestral homes in pursuit of wives in their new territories (Collins, 2011). These alliances used divorce, remarriage, and other quasi-kinship forms as strategic tools, discarding or creating kin networks to expand and strengthen their households compared to rival factions. Searle (1988) refers to this practice as “predatory kinship.” Creating new kinship enabled these ventures to gain greater flexibility and facilitated the emergence of new coalitions, leaders, and aristocracies.
Ritualistic bonds of loyalty were developed within these newly formed groups, often drawing upon the language and symbolism of kinship. Members frequently imagined a fictive ancestor, a mythical hero from whom they collectively claimed descent. This arrangement can be identified as feudalism if the overarching state structure consisted of such alliances among armed households, with legally recognized links between them and other landlords. Patrimonialism could then become the basis of the central authority in a state, a system of governance in which all administrative and political power is concentrated in the hands of the ruler, and the apparatus functions as the ruler’s personal household or estate.
Rational-Legal Bureaucracy vs Neopatrimonialism
In contrast to patrimonialism, the emerging contemporary form of bureaucracy is characterized by an emphasis on written rules and comprehensive record-keeping, as described by Weber (1922[1968]). Loyalty, a key element of patrimonial relationships, was replaced by impersonal adherence to the abstract duties and goals, as well as one’s position within it. In a bureaucracy employees are remunerated by salaries fixed by law, as opposed to patrimonial, informal exchanges of resources such as favors and gifts. The era of modern rational-legal bureaucracies physically separated the workplace from the household by establishing specialized buildings—offices, factories, stores, barracks, prisons—where individuals in formal roles were set apart from their families. The newly emerging state, with its bureaucratic apparatus, penetrated into households and reached individuals without the need for approval by the patriarch (Collins, 2011). Eventually, the state started to institute regulations on households including taxation, civil registration, and laws regarding living conditions, marital relations, property rights, and parents’ obligations.
Although patrimonialism appeared to decline with the emergence of sovereign nation-states and capitalism, by the late twentieth century, a surprising resurgence was noted in various regions, including the Middle East, former socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, post-colonial Africa, Latin America, and even the United States (Lachmann, 2011). In response to this revival, scholars have introduced a new term to describe this old yet renewed phenomenon: neopatrimonialism. It is defined as hybrid political systems where the traditions and practices of patrimonialism co-exist with, and influence, rational-legal institutions (Ermakoff, 2011).
Neopatrimonial Features in the Contemporary U.S
Even most recent U.S. presidents have demonstrated neopatrimonial elements. During his tenure as vice president, President Joe Biden faced scrutiny for his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and various interests in China (Areddy & Barber, 2024; Vogel, 2024). Critics argue that Hunter may have exploited his father’s political connections to secure lucrative board memberships and business opportunities. Furthermore, President Biden granted a full and unconditional pardon to his son on December 1, 2024, which encompassed all federal offenses committed by Hunter between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024, including convictions for tax evasion and federal gun charges (Shear & Kanno-Youngs, 2024).
During his first presidency between 2017 and 2021, President Donald Trump appointed his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner to formal advisory positions in the White House. Although the couple has distanced themselves from politics during Trump’s second term, Jared founded a successful venture capital firm shortly after leaving the White House. In 2022 he secured a significant $2 billion investment from a fund led by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Kelly & Kirkpatrick, 2022). Additionally, Jared’s father Charles Kushner—who pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion and was pardoned by Trump in 2020—was appointed as Ambassador to France by Trump in 2024 (Reich, 2024). During his second presidential campaign, Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump became prominent figures in his political operations, participating in rallies and strategy meetings alongside their father. Furthermore, in early 2024 the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump was appointed as co-chair of the Republican National Committee (Gold, 2022). During both his first and second terms, Trump’s family business has been highly profitable, doing business in multiple industries and pitching items such as bibles, watches, sneakers, and guitars with Trump’s name on them. Just days before his second inauguration, Mr. Trump and his family directly entered the cryptocurrency business themselves for the first time, selling their own new crypto token—a deal that generated tens of millions of dollars in transaction fees and potentially billions of dollars for the family through future token sales. Trump is also known for prioritizing unconditional personal loyalty over expertise and objective opinions. For example, former FBI Director James Comey was dismissed in 2017, and Trump later stated it was related to the Russia investigation, which Comey refused to shut down—indicating a preference for loyalty over institutional independence (Schmidt, 2017; Shear & Apuzzo, 2017).
Dynasty
A crucial aspect of patrimonial alliances was—and still is—strategic inheritance, which involves transferring authority and/or material wealth to the younger generation to establish, sustain, and expand a dynasty. Historians use the term “dynasty” to explain the structure of monarchical power and its reproduction through familial succession and the self-representation of rulers (Afanasyev & Banerjee, 2022). This construct has often been used as something pre-modern or medieval, the opposite of the modern state and its institutions. The concept of a dynasty goes against the democratic approach to modern societies, in which merit, professional knowledge, innovation, as well as rational-legal legitimacy are regarded as bases of economic and political resource allocation. Dynasty often intertwines political and economic powers as a way to hold strategic alliances together politically and economically at the same time. It is focused not just on individual success but also on creating lasting legacies.
Dynastic rule has been a prominent feature in chiefdoms, principalities, kingdoms, monarchies, and empires throughout history (Duindam, 2019). However, it also applies to affluent families. Cultivating dynastic wealth generally refers to families that own, accumulate, and transfer significant assets within and over generations to reproduce socio-economic advantages across changing cultural and political landscapes (Higgins, 2022). While inheritance upon the death of the family head often plays a key role in this process, it may also encompass various methods of wealth transfer that occur during the individual’s lifetime. Intergenerational wealth transfer is often not a discrete and finite transaction but an enduring familial practice. It may have a different face now, but the dynasty is alive and well. In fact, it is the primary means by which the concentration of wealth at the top occurs in modern affluent societies (Toft & Hansen, 2022). Today, this includes preserving multigenerational wealth through family practices, such as establishing and managing legal entities—corporations, trusts, and foundations—which are incorporated into bureaucratic practices, including meetings, training, and presentations (Shiffer-Sebba, 2025).
Dynastic State Capture
While neopatrimonialism and dynasty share certain similarities, the former in contemporary governments is often associated with personal loyalty, informal networks, and cliques that lack direct familial connections (Charrad, 2011). Therefore, I suggest introducing the term “dynastic state capture” to specifically highlight the family element and dynasty-building efforts in this grand corruption scheme. I use the case of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s long-time prime minister, and his family to show the corrupt intergenerational capital conversion—the concept originally used by Pierre Bourdieu (1986)—in a fully captured government system (Jancsics, 2024b, pp. 120–123). While other corruption types are typically based on social exchange, a quid pro quo between an agent and a client, state capture is a redistributive form of corruption based on resource collection and allocation by a central administration controlled by corrupt actors (Jancsics, 2019; Polanyi, 2001, p. 52). In the context of dynastic state capture, one or more family members must be positioned at the highest echelon of government to facilitate corruption. Here, the clear separation of the corrupt agent and client is more difficult, since the beneficiaries of the particularistic redistribution and the redistributors are members or loyal servants of the same family.
Another difference between it and other quid pro quo-based corruption is that dynastic state capture represents a sophisticated, long-term transformation process unfolding in distinct phases at the macro level of formal state institutions. This process begins with the collection of resources from the population through taxation—in the case of Hungary, often through EU funds—and culminates in the redistribution to family members. How does this transformation occur? The driving force behind this well-designed and sophisticated process is the control exerted by the government’s central authority, which oversees this redistribution. Through the example of Viktor Orbán’s family, I will illustrate how his significant political capital has been transformed into economic capital for his family. As a result, the entire state apparatus is leveraged to support and advance his dynasty’s economic ambitions. The intertwined dynamics of Orbán’s family’s economic development and his growing dominance within the Fidesz party, along with the party’s overall supremacy in Hungary’s political landscape, also suggest a profound departure from the more or less democratic practices of previous post-socialist governments in Hungary.
Orbán’s family embodies a politically secured accumulation of private wealth. While Orbán strives to maintain a separation between family business interests and political affairs in the eyes of Hungarian citizens, numerous instances reveal not only relatives receiving vast public resources but also family members engaging in state-related business, often in informal or semi-formal capacities. A notable example is the ventures of his daughter and her husband in the Arab world (hvg.hu, 2016). There are also instances of strategic patrimonial alliance, arrangements that go beyond immediate family—for example, the quasi-family relationship between Lőrinc Mészáros, the richest Hungarian oligarch, and Orbán. Essentially, what is happening in Hungary involves family coalitions exerting control over the state, all under the significant and nearly absolute power of Orbán and his party’s continuous ability to amend the constitution due to their two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament.
Intergenerational Political Dynasties in Hungary
The 40-year reign of the socialist system between 1949 and 1989 in Hungary both undid old economic and political elites and helped create new ones, some of whom adapted remarkably well to post-socialist capitalism. In traditional capitalist societies in the West, a substantial concentration of wealth is retained by a small elite known as the “capitalist class,” comprised predominantly of old-money families (Carney & Nason, 2018; Zeitlin, 1974). In contrast, during Hungary’s socialist regimes, private wealth was nationalized mainly. As a result, classical old-money families either vanished or were permitted to retain only a minor portion of their former assets, making it impossible to accumulate and pass down wealth through inheritance. However, some families managed to secure influential positions within the communist party bureaucracy.
Even under recent democratic elections, kinship continues to influence the composition of the political ruling class. Notable examples include the Kennedy, Bush, and Clinton families in the United States, the Le Pen family in France, the Trudeau family in Canada, the Papandreou family in Greece, and the Shinzō family in Japan (Geys & Smith, 2017). The emergence of a Soviet-style one-party state in Hungary, however, hindered the establishment of classical political dynasties. The regime portrayed itself as egalitarian and anti-aristocratic, rendering family-based power formally unacceptable. Nonetheless, a few families managed to accumulate power across generations and even political systems. The Apró family, for instance, stands out as one of Hungary’s most significant political dynasties, with roots tracing back to the communist era and a lasting impact on modern democratic politics. Antal Apró, a prominent figure in the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, held several high-level government positions during the Kádár regime, including Deputy Prime Minister and Speaker of the National Assembly. His political legacy continued through his daughter, Piroska Apró, an influential businessperson known for her behind-the-scenes influence, and his granddaughter, Klára Dobrev, a prominent left-liberal politician and former Vice President of the European Parliament (Magyari, 2007). Klára Dobrev is also married to former socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, who began his career as an oligarch in the early 1990s (Mong, 2012a).
Dynastic State Capture in Hungary
Viktor Orbán’s dynastic state capture differs from the traditional intergenerational political dynasties mentioned above. Because the Hungarian constitution does not impose term limits, Orbán, the European Union’s longest-serving prime minister, is on track to complete his fifth term by 2026 and may be re-elected. His primary goal is not to pass on his political power to family members—though some of his relatives had informal political roles—but rather to establish a formidable economic empire, effectively converting his political power into economic capital for his family. In public, he maintains a relatively modest demeanor and lifestyle. According to his latest asset declaration, he has savings of 5.7 million HUF (approximately 13,400 USD) as of December 21, 2024 (Cseke, 2024). As he stated in the Hungarian parliament in 2016, “The situation seems to be that I have been a member of parliament since 1990. I have never been a wealthy person, I am not now, and I will never be” (Hungarian Parliament, 2016). However, investigative journalists have revealed that his family is, in fact, part of Hungary’s billionaire class.
The Orbán Family
Viktor Orbán clearly did not come from an affluent family. One of his grandfathers worked as a dockworker in Csepel, traditionally Budapest’s most industrial and working-class district. To fully understand the family’s rapid accumulation of economic capital over just one generation, we need to reflect on the early 1990s, following the downfall of the communist one-party system in Hungary. During this time, newly established democratic parties were granted high-value properties by the state at no cost, which served as headquarters and helped ensure the basic operation of these parties. However, these properties were not utilized as intended. In 1993, the party Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats) under the leadership of Viktor Orbán—one of the founding members of the party—sold its freshly acquired headquarters, known as Tiszti Kaszinó—Royal Hungarian Officers’ Casino, a significant architectural and historical landmark—which was co-owned with another newly formed party, Magyar Demokrata Fórum, for 1.5 billion HUF. The profits from this sale were shared between the two parties, sparking significant public outcry.
At that time, Lajos Simicska, who would rise to prominence in the mid-2010s as one of the most influential Hungarian oligarchs, served as Fidesz’s economic director and began to invest this revenue into various business ventures. Both Simicska and Orbán studied law at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and were roommates in the dorms during their university years in Budapest in the 1980s. They were also among the founding members of Fidesz, established in 1988. Just prior to the headquarters deal, Viktor Orbán’s father, Győző Orbán, became the owner (alongside several other employees) of the mining company Dolomit Kft., his former employer that had recently been privatized. This occurred through a privatization program that enabled employees to become owners of state-owned companies. Shortly thereafter, Quality Investment Rt.., a company founded with money from the Fidesz headquarters sale and associated with Lajos Simicska, obtained a substantial stake in the mining firm but subsequently sold it to various owners, including Győző Orbán—this time the largest owner of the company—at a price significantly below its face value (Ószabó & Vajda, 1999). Orbán became a part-owner before the headquarters sale and significantly increased his share in the company afterward. That, briefly, is the “story of the first million” of the Orbán family, which already involved the improper use of taxpayers’ money—a trend that has continued in the family’s subsequent business ventures.
The Father’s Business
In 1996, the Orbán family (Győző Orbán, his wife, and Győző Orbán Jr.) established a new company called Gánt-kő Kft. This company acquired the rights to exploit two new mines: a gravel mine located in Vársapúszta in the Zámoly region and a sand mine near Felcsút. These new ventures allowed the Orbán family’s businesses to extract a full range of raw materials typically used in the construction industry. The family’s first significant business deal took place in 1997 when the older company, Dolomit Kft., became the supplier for the state-owned Dunaferr Dunai Vasmű. This occurred just 1 year prior to Viktor Orbán’s commencement of his first term as prime minister, which lasted from 1998 to 2002. By the latter half of the 1990s, the Orbán family had successfully established a mining empire in Fejér County. However, the colossal growth of the Orbán family business began after Viktor Orbán started his second term as Hungary’s prime minister in 2010.
While the mining companies owned by Viktor Orbán’s father and his two brothers paid 856 million HUF in dividends in the 10 years between 2004 and 2013, in the following decade, between 2014 and 2023, the family pocketed 10 billion HUF (about 28 million USD) (Jandó, 2024). Investigative journalists have uncovered that the companies’ remarkable performance was significantly aided by involvement in various public works projects funded by the European Union, which ironically are frequently targeted by Orbán’s rhetoric (Pethő & Zöldi, 2017). Notably, these companies did not win public tenders directly; instead, they served as subcontractors or suppliers for firms that were contracted by the state. This arrangement allows them to evade visibility in public tender databases, complicating efforts to gain a comprehensive understanding of their business activities. These companies also supplied building materials to firms associated with Lajos Simicska, a close ally of Orbán until 2015, as well as, more recently, to businesses linked to Lőrinc Mészáros, a childhood friend of Viktor Orbán and the wealthiest oligarch in Hungary. According to sources familiar with these transactions, the products were priced approximately 30 times higher than the standard industry rate (Pethő & Zöldi, 2017).
The Brothers
Energép Ltd. is an energy and construction firm engaged in plastic production and waste recycling operating on properties owned by Hahót Tőzeg Ltd., a joint venture of the prime minister’s mother and father (Zöldi & Pethő, 2021). Two of the three owners of Energép have close connections to Viktor Orbán’s younger brother, Győző Orbán Jr. One minority owner, Viktor Kovács, has direct familial ties to the Orbáns, as he is Győző Orbán Jr.’s son-in-law. The majority owner, Gábor Szentgyörgyi, is an entrepreneur whose IT group has secured government contracts totaling several million Euros since 2013 (Pethő, 2018). Szentgyörgyi and Orbán Jr. have been friends since childhood, bonded by their mutual interest in wrestling. In 2020 another company, Gamma Analcont Kft., which is partially owned by Győző Orbán Jr., won a significant public procurement, securing a net order of 268 million forints (approximately 730 thousand euros) for the remote monitoring of gas networks in the following years (Szőke, 2021).
Viktor Orbán’s second brother, Áron Orbán, is also active in business. He established several international businesses: Circles of Angels and Devils d.o.o. in Croatia and Angels Circle s.r.o. in Slovakia. All these companies share a similar profile, focusing on dealings involving weapons. He also owns and operates a shooting range that lists several oligarch or state-owned companies as partners on its website, including Lőrinc Mészáros’ ZÁÉV, László Szíjj’s Duna-Asfalt, as well as the state-owned Mátra Power Plant and the Central Transdanubian Water Management Directorate (Katus, 2023).
The Wife
Anikó Lévai, the wife of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has substantially increased her real estate portfolio since the 1990s. In her most recent wealth declaration, published in 2010 during the period when the financial disclosures of politicians’ family members were made public, she listed 38 properties (Vorák, 2016). Notably, Lévai amassed this wealth despite having minimal to no significant income during much of that time. The official homepage of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán highlights her charitable and volunteer work, yet she has never reported any income in her public wealth declarations.
Lévai initiated her investment portfolio in 1997 in the historically renowned Tokalj Hegyalja wine region by acquiring 50,000 square meters of land from the local municipality at an exceptionally low price. As of 2010 she had acquired nearly 100 acres in various locations, including a significant area in Viktor Orbán’s hometown of Felcsút. Additionally, Lévai co-owned a grape farm in Olaszriszka with the Hungarian Ambassador to France at the time, Dezső Kékessy, and the president of Posta Bank, László Madarász.
Notably, there emerged a powerful business network from Lévai’s hometown of Szolnok, gaining significant influence after 2010, which includes Zsolt Nyerges, a prominent oligarch (Mong, 2012b). Among various business ventures, Nyerges established a property management firm named A4B Management Ingatlankezelő Zrt. This limited liability company was founded with share capital of 100 million forints, with Nyerges as the sole owner. Intriguingly, the position of managing director was given to Márk Ádám Szeghalmi, the nephew of Anikó Lévai (hvg.hu, 2019). Imre Ökrös, Lévai’s brother-in-law and a close friend of Nyerges, is also part of this circle. His wife is Gizella Lévai; they have two sons from her first marriage: the aforementioned Ádám, and Balázs Szeghalmi, who managed the Hungarian-Turkish Trade Center during Hungary’s Eastward opening policy to create closer economic, transport, and energy relations with the Turkic countries, namely, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The center was owned by Andan Polat, a Turkish businessman believed to be a friend of Viktor Orbán (Barnóczki, 2024).
The Daughter and Son-in-Law
Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law István Tiborcz is a key figure in Orbán’s dynasty-building project. In 2010, a company associated with Lajos Simicska became the majority owner of an energy firm known as ES Holding, where the then-24-year-old István Tiborcz served as co-owner and director (Pethő, 2017). At that time, he was dating Ráhel Orbán, the eldest daughter of Viktor Orbán. The couple married in 2013. Tiborcz continued to serve as a director of the energy company, conducting business activities under the oversight of Simicska and his associates.
Tiborcz’s first major successful company, Elios, specialized in public lighting projects across entire towns and cities, funded through EU grants. They secured over 30 significant public tenders. The requirements for these tenders were so high that only Elios could fulfill them. Additionally, these calls had very tight deadlines, preventing other companies from preparing detailed proposals without insider knowledge before the tenders were announced. Elios clearly knew the details of tenders before they were even published. Also, the calls had very specific technological requirements, such as using certain brands and products that other competitors could not supply. In 2015, the European Anti-Fraud Office conducted a comprehensive investigation into these suspicious public lighting contracts, while the European Commission’s Directorate General for Regional Policy also launched an audit into Elios. Probably due to the investigations, Tiborcz gave up his shares in the company and started a new business, BDPST Group, in 2015.
By 2025, Tiborcz had established a significant empire in luxury real estate, encompassing high-end hotels as well as financial and logistics firms, with Ráhel Orbán involved in managing various segments of this empire (Pethő et al., 2025). In 2024, Tiborcz was ranked as the 19th richest individual in Hungary (Haszán, 2024). His ventures benefited from favorable state loans for many of his investments (Szabó, 2021). Noteworthy aspects of Tiborcz’s business portfolio include a considerable tax exemption of approximately 30 billion HUF that BDPST Group received in 2024, thanks to new regulations allowing companies focused on heritage buildings to significantly lower their tax base (Spirk & Vitéz, 2024). In the same year, the Hungarian government purchased office space from Tiborcz’s firm across three locations in Budapest for 600 billion HUF (about 1.6 billion USD), with prices ranging from about 40% to 70% above market value (Bódis, 2024). These dealings remained under wraps until investigative journalists uncovered them. Additionally, Adnan Polat, the above-mentioned Turkish oligarch with close connections to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was identified as a co-owner of businesses in partnership with BDPST Group (Szabó, 2021).
The Quasi-Family
While there are no blood ties between the Orbán and Mészáros families, scholars and experts often consider the Mészáros family to be an extended quasi-family of Viktor Orbán. Some even speculate that Mészáros acts as a stooge or strawman for Orbán and his wealth is in fact Orbán’s wealth. A significant and close relationship has existed for decades between the two families. Lőrinc Mészáros, who began as a small-town gas fitter in Felcsút, rose to become Hungary’s richest individual, boasting a net worth of $5 billion by 2025 (Forbes, 2025). A childhood friend of Viktor Orbán, Mészáros began amassing his wealth rapidly after Orbán returned to power in 2010 and particularly after 2015, when Orbán publicly distanced himself from Lajos Simicska, then the most powerful oligarch. Consequently, Simicska’s wealth was rapidly and significantly diminished. Mészáros’s fortune primarily stemmed from winning state contracts and acquiring interests in key sectors, including construction, media, energy, and agriculture. Many of his companies have secured lucrative public tenders, often uncontested and significantly supported by EU subsidies.
Mészáros replaced Simicska as Orbán’s right-hand oligarch on the national stage, but the families also strengthened their bonds locally. In 2015 the Orbán’s family sold a nearly four-hectare plot of land in Felcsút to Lőrinc Mészáros and immediately entered into a 20-year lease to rent it back, allowing Győző Orbán and his son to continue sand mining on the property for years to come. In a separate transaction, Győző Orbán acquired the Hatvanpuszta manor house, situated between Felcsút and Alcsútdoboz, through a different company. Subsequently, Mészáros was granted a 10-year lease on the 13-hectare complex (Magyar, 2015). As another evidence of the bond between the families, all other property around the Orban farm is owned by the Meszaros family. For a period of time, Mészáros and Tiborcz also co-owned a property investment holding, Appeninn Holding Nyrt., with a portfolio valued at billions of HUF (hvg.hu, 2020).
Discussion
At the top of the corruption “food chain,” state capture represents the most consciously organized and sophisticated form of corruption (Jancsics, 2024b). Unlike other forms that rely on exchange arrangements, state capture represents a redistributive approach characterized by the collection and allocation of resources by a corrupt central authority (Jancsics, 2019; Polanyi, 2001, p. 52). State capture is often systemic, which means that corruption is the main guiding principle of governance. Typical methods for extracting resources from a captured system by specific interest groups in these major corruption schemes include large infrastructure projects, public procurement initiatives, extensive concession tenders, and ownership transfers through nationalization, privatization, or reprivatization (Jancsics, 2024b). It requires a level of power necessary to effectively control the process of redistributing state resources by manipulating law and policy-making processes. As a result, the state allocates resources in ways that benefit particularistic actors rather than the general public or the whole society. Dynastic state capture represents a subcategory of this corruption, when neither mere economic nor political actors but an entire family controls and consciously distorts the state’s redistributive functions. A captured state represents a hybrid structure of two forms of organization. Since this corruption is legal—at least on the surface—it seemingly functions as a modern bureaucracy coordinated by conventional formal hierarchical rules. However, behind the scenes it is organized informally as a neopatrimonial system and, particularly in cases of dynastic state capture, centered around one family.
Capital is what makes the games of society, not least the economic game, something other than simple games of chance. Following Bourdieu’s (1986) work, dynastic state capture can also be conceptualized as a form of capital conversion. Bourdieu acknowledges three primary types of capital: economic capital (money and property), cultural capital (cultural goods and services including educational credentials), and social capital (acquaintances and networks). He also pays a good bit of attention to a fourth form of capital—symbolic capital (legitimation). Although Bourdieu (1991, p. 192) did not extensively study political capital, he treated it as a form of symbolic capital in the political field that enables agents to exercise power and recognition.
One form of capital can be converted into another, depending on the field—a structured social space with its own rules—and the legitimacy structures within it. This conversion is never automatic but requires strategic action and recognition by others in the field. For example, economic capital can be transformed into cultural capital through elite education, or into symbolic capital when wealth is seen as a mark of prestige. Another example is how celebrities from music or sports can turn their fame into business ventures and/or into political office. The transformation process is governed by field-specific logics, meaning that the value and convertibility of capital depend on the rules and power relations of each social arena. Thus, capital transformation is both a resource-based and symbolic process, continuous actions and reactions through which all social groups strive to maintain or improve their position in the social structure. In the case of dynastic state capture, family members gain enough formal power to define the rules of the game and convert their political capital into economic capital.
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