Tycoon in anti-PM graffiti slur

pulse

November 28, 2017 7:21 PM

A long-running spat between Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban and his millionaire ex-college roommate has taken a lewd twist after Lajos Simicska was pictured apparently daubing a poster with anti-Orban graffiti.

A long-running spat between Hungarian Prime Minister

Hungarian news sites on Tuesday featured an image of 57-year-old Simicska, a prominent right-wing magnate, holding a spray can in front of a poster tagged with the words: "Orban is a piece of jizz."

Relations between Orban and the powerful Simicska, a former treasurer of the ruling Fidesz party, began to sour after Orban was re-elected as premier in 2014.

The government introduced a tax on advertising revenues that year which hurt Simicska's interests, including leading conservative news outlets.

Simicska later insulted Orban in an expletive-laden rant on live radio soon after staff from his Magyar Nemzet daily newspaper left en masse to join public media.

Simicska's apparent choice of poster to deface was a giant billboard advertising a government crackdown on foreign-funded NGOs, many of which are financed by US billionaire George Soros.

Orban is seeking a third term in elections next year, but his Fidesz party is under pressure from the ultra-nationalist and eurosceptic Movement for a Better Hungary -- known as Jobbik, which Simicska supports.

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