Interim MTVA leadership files complaint over massive inventory gaps in public media assets

MTVA’s interim leadership has initiated legal action after a 2025 inventory exposed serious deficiencies in the public broadcaster’s asset tracking. The review found 9,738 items missing, among them an antenna that had been installed on the Budapest Sportcsarnok before the venue was destroyed by fire in 1999. The audit also noted that thousands of assets were linked to defunct organizational units or temporary sites, and that over a third of the entries did not reflect the real state of the items.

Technical equipment such as studio structures, rail systems and lighting were omitted from the count, while many objects were listed only with vague labels like “chair” or “lamp,” making identification impossible. Of the 173,000 items recorded, 95,000 belong to costume and prop inventories that have not been physically verified since 2019, with loans tracked only in notebooks. The interim board has ordered a comprehensive, item-by-item recount to be carried out by an external firm.