Katzy

I suspect there are quite a few politicians sitting in various corners of Europe and North America who are rather anxious these days about the prospect of information emerging in the coming weeks and months regarding how they received funds, channelled through the Hungarian government and Hungarian state-financed organisations, to conduct subversive political activities in their home countries. And yes, Orbán himself has in all likelihood received a substantial portion of this money directly from Russia — primarily through Gazprom. The evidence for the broader Kremlin-Hungary nexus has grown dramatically in recent weeks. A major consortium of investigative journalists published transcripts of phone calls between Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Russian officials, strongly suggesting that Budapest functioned as a fifth column within the EU with Szijjártó allegedly coordinating with Moscow to undermine sanctions and sharing intelligence on Ukraine's EU accession process. Szijjártó himself visited Moscow no fewer than 16 times following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The financial architecture underpinning this relationship is also becoming clearer. Investigative reporting has traced Orbán-linked financial forces specifically connected to Hungarian state-affiliated banks to the financing of far-right parties elsewhere in Europe, including Marine Le Pen's campaign in France and Spain's Vox party. The money trail does not appear to run directly from Gazprom to Orbán to foreign parties, but rather through a layered system of Hungarian state intermediaries. The deeper Russian connection comes via energy deals: between 2011 and 2015, Hungarian gas purchases were routed through an opaque intermediary company, MET International, with both Russian and Hungarian ownership and documented ties to Putin's inner circle and Orbán's government. This brings us to CPAC Hungary. Magyar has now confirmed publicly what many suspected: CPAC was paid for by the Hungarian state. In his words, "the state should never have financed them in the first place — it was a crime." The same applies to related institutions such as the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, which served as a key vehicle for spreading Orbán's ideological influence across Europe and beyond. I am not suggesting that every politician who attended CPAC Hungary knowingly received Russian-linked funds. But the financing chain is now confirmed — Hungarian taxpayers' money, quite possibly supplemented by Russian energy revenues, was used to host and cultivate a global network of like-minded politicians. If I were a journalist in any country whose politicians attended those events, that would seem a rather pressing line of inquiry. The urgency of that inquiry is underscored by what is reportedly happening right now. According to Magyar's international press conference, Szijjártó has barricaded himself with close colleagues and is actively destroying and shredding documents specifically evidence relating to sanctions against Russia. If accurate, this is not the behaviour of an innocent man. It is the behaviour of someone who knows exactly what those documents contain and who those documents implicate. One hopes the new Hungarian government moves fast enough to secure what remains.