Mayor had orgy on yacht? No problem, voters say

Start with an Olympic gymnast-turned-mayor and his business associate, cruising off the coast of Croatia on a luxury yacht. Surround them with countless bottles of alcohol and scantily clad young women. Add in rumors of corruption, cocaine, money laundering and prostitution.

And to top it off, film them all having an orgy on the boat.

That’s the political scandal that recently engulfed Zsolt Borkai, the mayor of Hungary’s sixth-largest city, a week before his reelection campaign was set to come to a close.

But not even a viral sex tape making the rounds on adult websites was enough to derail Borkai, a married father of two and an ally to the country’s authoritarian right-wing prime minister, from winning another term Sunday as mayor of Gyor.

The saga began when a blogger who refers to himself only as “the Devil’s Advocate” posted links to a leaked video of Borkai, 54, engaging in a cocaine-fueled orgy aboard a yacht. Borkai and his lawyer, the blogger alleged, had used government money to fund their romp on the Adriatic Sea and hire the escorts.

At first, Borkai, who won gold on the pommel horse in the 1998 Olympic Games and has been mayor of Gyor since 2006, denied that the video was of him. But days later, he changed course. “The published recordings picturing me were made years ago,” he told a local television station on Oct. 7, according to Hungary Today. “Some of the footage is manipulated, other parts are genuine.” Although he apologized for the tape, he denied charges of money laundering, hiring escorts and using cocaine.

Meanwhile, a left-wing newspaper reported that one of the young women in the tape had received the equivalent of nearly $10,000 in government grants to open a wedding-dress rental company.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a staunch authoritarian who has painted himself as a defender of Hungary’s Christian culture. But he said he would punish cities that voted to abandon Fidesz, the conservative ruling party whose slogan is “God, nation, family.”

Late last week, the opposition party put up posters at a Fidesz headquarters that instead read, “Public funds, cocaine, whores.”