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Since 2014, when the prime minister first mooted the prospect of investment, the seven most prominent waterfront properties in Keszthely have changed hands. An analysis of publicly available data shows three of them are now owned by Orban’s childhood friend Lorinc Meszaros and his business partners, and another three by Orban’s son-in-law Istvan Tiborcz and his associates. Reuters has also found company documents that show a company co-owned by Orban’s son-in-law Tiborcz stands to collect almost half of any profits from a venture which acquired the resort’s biggest hotel.

Neither Tiborcz or Meszaros responded to requests for comment.

Meszaros and Tiborcz are part of a Hungarian elite which has grown fast over the past eight years, acquiring stakes in major industries like banking, energy, construction, agriculture and the media, as well as tourism. In all, 10 individuals have significant stakes in the Keszthely developments. Most of them have become heavyweights in the broad economy: Companies they control have participated in winning bids for public procurement contracts, some of them funded by the EU, worth nearly $8 billion since Orban resumed power in 2010, according to a Reuters analysis of data collected by the Corruption Research Centre Budapest, a think tank, from the Public Procurement Authority.

That is more than 10 percent of the value of such contracts over that time. Last year was a bumper one for public procurement tenders: More than $14 billion were awarded, and companies controlled by men with interests on the Keszthely waterfront won just over $4 billion of them - more than one dollar in every four.

he European Union’s anti-fraud office (Office européen de lutte antifraude or OLAF), has recommended that Brussels ask Hungary to repay EU funds totalling more than 4 percent of the cash Europe has given it between 2012 and 2015.