03.14.24

Orbán, Judas and the gay lobby – behind Zoltán Balog’s attempt to rescue himself in his church

Pardon scandal

Only the shadow of Zoltán Balog could be seen under the arch of the tiny Austrian Orthodox stone monastery.

On 8 February, the former minister, who became a Reformed bishop shared a photo on social media, letting his followers know that he was retreating “for a few weeks to pray, think, read and write” in “the silence of God”.

Although it might have seemed at the time that this was Balog’s way of escaping from the pardon case that had by then become a national scandal, he had in fact been planning this retreat to Austria for a long time. Months earlier, he had already refused all requests for February meetings. He planned a several week-long sabbatical in a quiet street of Sankt Andrä am Zicksee, a few kilometers from Sopron.

But there was little time for contemplation. After Katalin Novák’s resignation, it soon became known – following a joint article by Direkt36 and Telex – that Balog had played a crucial role in the pardon decision that led to one of the biggest political scandals of recent decades. It was Balog who lobbied Novák – his former subordinate and who he also mentored – to grant presidential pardon to the former deputy director of the Bicske children’s home, who was found guilty by a court of law of covering up pedophile crimes.

Since then, Balog has been struggling to retain his position in the Reformed Church, which he has dominated for the past few years. Although he has already resigned from one of his important positions, he has not yet officially left it, and he continues to lead one of the districts as bishop.

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Direkt36 has in recent weeks spoken to nearly 20 sources with insight into Balog’s struggle to retain at least some of his influence within the church. The way Balog has handled the case has caused an uproar among Reformed circles, and many have seen the bishop’s pushing the church ahead of himself as a way of defending himself as a backhanded move.

However, the situation has changed since then and Balog now enjoys increasingly broad support. One reason for this is that external pressure has led to a unity of the church leadership, while overt attacks from government circles have ceased. Balog spoke in private about how Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had left it up to him to decide about his future.

We asked Balog a detailed series of questions, but he did not provide a substantive response. Sending the text of the Lenten circular letter, signed by Balog and issued on 6 March, and noted by the Synod Presidium, the Reformed Church’s communications department replied that “in the Reformed Church, it is the bodies that decide on the church’s position.”

The bonfire

Two days after Novák’s resignation, Balog cut short his retreat in Austria on 12 February, and went home to defend himself to his church. As part of this, he sent a letter to pastors and presbyters.

In the letter, obtained by Telex, Balog stressed that as an adviser to Katalin Novák he was not representing the church. He did not mention János Vásárhelyi, who committed pedophile crimes in the child care facility in Bicske, but pointed out that as minister he had suspended him from his post as director “when suspicions arose against him”.

“In the interest of the deputy director, Endre K. (who was not convicted as a pedophile), a request for pardon was submitted to the President of the Republic. The request was not submitted by me” said Balog, who concluded his letter by recalling the pastoral solidarity he said they had experienced at their meeting in the Groupama Arena a few weeks earlier.

Zoltán Balog on October 18, 2023 Photo: Zoltán Balog / Facebook

The day after Balog’s return, on 13 February, he called a so-called dean-deacon meeting. It is attended by the deans and deacons of the 27 dioceses in Hungary. One source familiar with church affairs described the meeting as an “informal yet influential” forum, with the four bishops from the dioceses attending.

Balog approached the participants through his direct team ahead of the meeting. According to a source from the church, the deans and deacons were told via phone, that “it is not in anyone’s interest that drastic things to happen”, referring to the need to avoid calls for the resignation of Balog as synod president and bishop.

Despite this, the meeting was held in a tense atmosphere, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting. Balog arrived to the huge building on Abonyi Street in a black Volvo SUV, which, avoiding the journalists waiting outside, pulled up to one of the internal entrances so that the bishop could disappear inside the building as soon as he got out of the car. Before the meeting, the phones had to be handed in, which was criticized by many. Some deans did not even go to the meeting. There were also some who did not want to give up their phones, and a colleague of Balog’s told them that at least they would know who would leak details to the press.

“There was a brutal news blackout,” said a source with insight into the operation of the Reformed leadership of circumstances created by Balog and his team.

At the meeting, Balog tried to explain to his audience why he supported Endre K.’s request for pardon. According to several sources familiar with the details of the meeting, Balog explained that he had received a lot of information on the alleged unfairness of the trial of Endre K. in the second instance. The bishop also said that it might have been the case that the judges were under social pressure and therefore did not weigh all the evidence sufficiently.

According to one participant, it was mainly Károly Fekete, Bishop of the Tiszántúl District, who objected to Balog’s explanation, and “deans also asked questions”. According to the source, Fekete said that he could not accept what the synod president had said. (In their response the press department of the Tiszántúli Egyházkerület led by Fekete sent us the letter in which he called on Zoltán Balog to resign. The press department said that the bishop maintains his position and “considers his request for patience and moderation to be valid for him as well”.)

“The next day the church exploded,” explained a church source who also knows Reformed leaders, who said Balog had not expected an uproar among ordinary believers and the lower clergy. According to the source, Balog made two serious mistakes in his statement.

“In the video he did not apologize to the child victims. The other was that he pushed the church in front of himself,”

explained the source, who said many felt Balog was making power maneuvers and using the church as a defense. The source said that by specifically referring in the statement to his belief that the government had no role in the church’s settlement of the matter, he was “sort of sending a message that I defended myself, Viktor”.

“I have not met anyone at the Synod center who did not think that Zoltán Balog was smearing the church with the case,” said another source close to the church leadership.

The protests were intensified by the fact that a day after the meeting Károly Fekete attacked Balog in public in a bishop’s circular letter, calling on him to resign.

Balog was supported by fellow bishop József Steinbach, head of the Dunántúl District, who, according to the daily political newspaper Népszava, was at the synod meeting of the opinion that if Zoltán Balog was good when he was getting support for the church, he should be good in these difficult times. In a later statement, Steinbach did not deny or confirm that he held this view. “Neither of us has the authority to comment on what has been said there,” he wrote in a statement on the synod meeting posted on the church’s website.

However, some within the Church were more critical of Balog’s handling of the crisis. For example, they were disturbed by what they saw as the bishop’s political behavior in the situation.

“We issue statements, we expect them to accept our narrative. Just like in Fidesz. But we are a church, questions should be asked,”

said a source close to the church leadership.

Ordinary believers were also disturbed by Balog’s role in the pardon case either. “There was outrage and incomprehension in the church. Some believers who work in child protection are particularly outraged and don’t understand why Zoltán Balog is not resigning,” a pastor explained.

There was also pressure on Balog from outside the church. The Reformed Church member Viktor Orbán did not take a clear position after the dean-deacon meeting, but critical voices appeared in the Fidesz media. Zsolt Bayer, a leading figure in government propaganda, shared an article critical of Balog on his blog by Gergely Huth, editor-in-chief of the Pesti Srácok propaganda website, and as a comment on the results of the sympathy vote, he wrote “the big question is how God voted…”

According to a source with contacts in the church leadership, Bayer’s statement and other critical articles “were interpreted even in Balog’s circle that the government wants him to step down”.

The bishop’s case was also actively covered by media independent from the government’s influence, and the church’s communication was unprepared for the heightened interest. “In the government, I saw what hardcore crisis communication looked like. It wasn’t like that,” said a source close to the government who had followed the process closely.

The pressure eventually has had its effect. Three days after the dean-deacon meeting, Balog resigned from his position as president of the synod, the highest position in the Reformed Church of Hungary.

He did so at the so-called synodal meeting, an informal leadership forum of the church (the formal one is the synod, but it takes longer to convene). The bishop’s behavior at this meeting was quite different from Tuesday’s. “Balog apologized there. He realized that he was no longer there and did not try to defend himself or prove that the pardon was the right decision. Of course, he told what he said later in the video, that he thought Endre K. was innocent,” said a source familiar with the details of the meeting.

“By Friday, the air had run out around him. It was shocking to see him burning alive on the bonfire of the media,”

said a source from the church who had known Balog for a long time about the sudden turnaround, referring to the fact that in the days before the bishop had been under constant pressure, the press was all over him and wherever he went, journalists were waiting.

However, Balog still has an important post within the church after the resignation: he heads the Dunamelléki district, one of the four Reformed districts in Hungary. He then concentrated on securing his position here and began an intensive campaign to do so.

Convergence

This included several meetings initiated by Balog in the Dunamelléki district after the outbreak of the pardon case. According to a source with links to the bishop’s circle, Balog also referred to the events as road show.

One of these was a meeting on 2 March at the bishop’s office in Ráday Street, Budapest. About 60 pastors from two Budapest dioceses gathered in the second-floor banquet hall of the building, which burned down a few years earlier and was renovated in 2022. They had come to hear their bishops’ answers to their questions on the pardon case.

József Szloboda, dean of the Budapest-Northern Diocese, opened the event with prayer and a Bible reading for the large circle of clergy. Balog then took the floor. He spoke first of what he said had been achieved since his election as bishop and synod president, and then turned to the current situation. When asked, Mr Szloboda acknowledged that he had attended the event, but did not elaborate on what had happened there.

According to one participant, Balog also said that he was not welcome in the government circles: “He said that he had invited the local Fidesz MP to a pastoral inauguration that day, but he refused to attend, saying that >>it would not be good if he were to be seen with the bishop at this time<<“. The pastoral inauguration took place in Szentmártonkáta: the MP for the constituency, György Czerván, did not answer the question sent to him.

Most pastors at the meeting spoke in support of Balog, and some regretted that “they didn’t pray enough for their leaders”, including church and political leaders.

However, some pastors criticised Balog. Among them was László Thoma, a pastor from Gazdagrét in Budapest, who said in a sermon on 18 February that “politics cannot be so involved in the workings of the people of God” and said the bishop “would be most helpful if he would see the harm he is doing and resign his leadership.” Thoma said on Ráday Street, according to a source present at the meeting, that he “takes responsibility before God” for what he said at the time, adding that his views were shared by his presbytery. Then, citing that he was teaching a class at the Károli Gáspár Reformed University, he left the room. (Thoma declined to answer questions sent to him.)

Balog responded to the criticism of his political connections by contemplating on the history of the church and recalled that there had been Reformed leaders in the past who had a political background. Regarding Thoma, he pointed out that despite his criticism of him, he supported his appointment as a teacher. He dismissed another critical comment, which took issue with his failure to apologize to the victims in Bicske, by referring to the statement he made when he resigned as synod president. (At the time, he said in a prayer, “forgive me if the victims of child abuse could feel left to fend for themselves, not just now, but so many times in their lives. Protect them even when we fail to do so.”)

He spoke briefly about his resignation, saying that his departure from the presidency of the synod is “outward”, because in this position he represents the Church to society and the government, while the episcopate is “inward”, because it now includes the internal affairs of the Church, such as “pastoral care of pastors”.

A few days later, on 7 March, he also met with the pastors and deacons of the Diocese of Vértesalja in the Gárdony congregation house. According to one of the participants in the meeting, Szabolcs Koppány Hajdú, the dean of the diocese, stressed the importance of church cohesion.

“What do we care what people think of us outside? We shall stick together!”,

Hajdú called on pastors and deacon, according to a source at the meeting. The dean, according to the source, also spoke of the importance of recognizing friends and enemies, citing the British aircraft’s stranger-friend recognition system from World War II as a military example. He then gave the biblical example of Judas, who he said “was not an external enemy, yet he betrayed Jesus.” (Hajdú, when contacted, did not deny that he had spoken of these things, but said that the meeting was a private, non-press, religious event.)

After the dean’s introduction, Zoltán Balog took the floor.

The Bishop reiterated what he had said at the previous meeting, but also explained why he thought the Church was under so much pressure. According to leaks, Balog said that “if I were not here, the church would still be under attack.” He blamed the current situation on those “causing the storm”, referring to church figures who have expressed their views on the matter in public and the media.

Then one participant said that he began to reflect that if he resigned the episcopate, “representatives of the LGBTQ community will realize that they always have to attack the church if they want to force change.” According to the source, Balog added that if he also resigned from the leadership of the district, he would only be indicating that “the Reformed are a bunch of cowards who are not capable of defending their leaders.”

“What will we do when a power comes along that wants to ordain gay pastors or marry gay couples in churches?” – he asked, according to a source with details of the meeting.

Balog also spoke of Károly Fekete, the bishop of the Tiszántúl district, who called for his resignation after the dean-deacon meeting. According to sources familiar with the details of the meeting, it was not the call to resign that Balog objected to, but the fact that he had to learn about it from the press.

Károly Fekete, bishop of the Tiszántúli Reformed Church District on February 11, 2024. Photo: Tiszántúli Református Egházkerület / Facebook

Sources who attended the Ráday Street and Gárdony meetings separately said that Balog also spoke about Endre K.’s case on both occasions. They both unanimously claimed that the bishop said that he had met Endre K. in person, after which he was convinced that he was innocent despite the court verdict. He continued to maintain K.’s innocence and said in Gárdony that his support for the pardon was “not a moral but a political mistake.” (The personal meeting between Endre K. and Zoltán Balog, who was pardoned by Katalin Novák, was also reported by hvg.hu.)

Balog also said that there are politicians who have refused to meet him since the pardon case broke out but he had spoken to Viktor Orbán five times in recent weeks and assured the audience that the prime minister would leave it to his judgment how he decides about his future. Balog’s relationship with Orbán goes back a long time: in an interview in 2007, the bishop spoke of the then opposition leader as being “bound to him by a friendly loyalty”. We did not receive a reply to our questions sent to the prime minister.

The Moment of Truth

It seems that, after the initial uproar, the plan to silence critical voices and align the church behind Balog has succeeded.

An indication of this is the Lenten circular letter issued on March 6, signed by eight church leaders, including Balog and Fekete, who had called for Balog’s resignation just a few weeks earlier.

“While the world’s logic is to keep us in sin, we are determined by the spirit of confessing sin, repentance, apology, forgiveness, and the attitude of » go and sin no more « (John 8:11). In this spirit, we close this matter among ourselves and continue to serve God, our church, and our nation,” they wrote.

Balog is trying to demonstrate his openness to the Reformed community with meetings convened in the Dunamelléki Diocese. “The goal is to satisfy the curiosity of the pastors, answer their questions, and speak with them personally,” said a source with connections in church leadership about the meetings. “It’s not an election campaign; he wants to see what the lower clergy thinks,” added a source with insights into church affairs.

“The case has shaken the pastors. Everyone is struggling with how to interpret this for their congregation and what light it sheds on their ministry,”

explained a source participating in the meeting on Ráday Street.

Both Balog and other Reformed leaders, however, want to resolve the crisis caused by the pardon case among themselves. This is evidenced by a pastoral letter sent to pastors in the Vértesaljai Diocese on February 20, as obtained by Direkt36. In this letter, Szabolcs Koppány Hajdú, the dean, sent a message to those who believe Balog should resign. “If some demand his resignation, sooner or later everyone with ties to public life, politics as a church person, regardless of which side they are on (church, politics – clergy, congregation member), wishes the worst for our church, our country. Rather, would you let those lead the country, the communities, our church, who know neither God nor man, only their own interests?”

He then asked his fellow pastors: “…let us discuss internal matters affecting our church, differences of opinion among ourselves first! …Please, advise those who do not act this way! We cannot cause more harm to ourselves by succumbing to immediate impulses to disassociate.”

(In response to our inquiry, Hajdú did not deny writing the letter obtained by Direkt36 but did not respond substantively to questions about it.)

In recent weeks, more and more people have accepted Balog’s arguments, claiming that not only he but the entire church is under attack.

“The attacks have reached a level where the church has begun to close ranks. They see that Balog is not being attacked from the government, there are no leaks about him. Only the opposition media attacks him, but that is in their opinion biased anyways,”

explained one source familiar with the internal affairs of the church.

The support of Balog was also bolstered by the fact that many within the church feel that without him the state subsidies that have been trickling in nicely in recent years could be in danger. In recent years, many churches have been renovated, even the churches of smaller villages have received subsidies amounting to hundreds of millions of forints for renovation. In addition, the Reformed Church was enriched with institutions and real estate: after the conflagration, the Reformed college in Ráday Street and the bishop’s palace in the same building as well as the Károlyi-Csekonics Palace used by the Károli Gáspár Reformed University were renovated, and the 320-bed Törökbálint Pulmonology Hospital was recently added to the church’s institutions.

“To be cynical, that’s why he was elected,” said a church source. “Balog acted in many cases, he arranged everything for everyone, that was his profile. It became a general feeling that anything could be done, the pastors were waiting outside his room,” explained a pastor source.

“Many fear that with Balog’s fall, he would drag the church down with him,” explained another source from the Reformed church.

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Already during his ministerial tenure, Balog did a lot for his popularity within the church, and the church leaders openly talked about the fact that they owe him a lot of financial support. In 2018, István Szabó, Balog’s predecessor at the head of the Dunamellék Church District and as president of the synod, asked the pastors in his episcopal report to thank the minister personally for the extra resources: “…for Christian ethics, what’s more, for the Christian faith, the Christian life consecration has a small but important element, and that is that if we receive something that was not a reward, that was not written in our award letter, that was not planned in the budget, it is appropriate to thank them. What’s more, you must thank! That is the receipt… I should therefore like to thank the outgoing ministers, and among them Minister Zoltán Balog.”

The bishop himself believes that his person is a guarantee that the church will not have financial problems. At a meeting held for theology teachers in January of this year, he answered a question asked about the copious subsidies, “if there is another government, the moment of truth will come,” recalled one of the participants of the meeting.

The synod will formally decide on Balog’s resignation as synod president in April, this may confirm his decision, but it may even decide not to accept it. “If the people say, dear bishop, please let’s stay, then he might accept it,” explained a source close to the Reformed church’s leadership, who says that the current public mood in the church favors Balog’s stay. However, he added that “a month and a half is a very long time, Easter will be in the meantime, there will be political events, the Child Protection Act may be on the agenda”, and these may change the circumstances.

András Pethő contributed to this article.

Cover photo by Péter Somogyi (szarvas) / Telex

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03.14.24

Editors stand by the attacked Atlatszo

Direkt36

The Hungarian Press Prize, the highest award of the Association of Hungarian Journalists, was presented to the editorial staff of Atlatszo on Wednesday. The outlet, which is always critical of the powers that be and whose founder exposed police brutality and abuses during the Gyurcsány government in the autumn of 2006, and which also published Viktor Orbán’s private flights in 2018., or, for example, the scandal of the deforested canopy walkway last year.

While the exceptional work of this editorial team is being recognised with a professional award on the occasion of the Hungarian Press Freedom Day, the propaganda satellite organisations controlled by the government are conducting a campaign to portray the editorial team as a representative of foreign interests, citing the recently adopted law on the protection of sovereignty.

As the national holiday reminds us, Hungarian journalism has often been tried to be sent into oblivion by oppressive powers, but as Atlatszo’s acknowledgement indicates, it has never succeeded.

Our stand will remind the attackers of press freedom of this historic failure on 15 March, and the next day and the day after. We are in solidarity with Atlatszo, as we will be with any other newspaper attacked for presenting the truth, the reality. In other words, which serves the Hungarian interest above all.

The editorial staff of Válasz Online
Attila Babos, Szabad Pécs
Zsanett Bajáki, KecsUP Hírek
Endre B. Bojtár, Magyar Narancs
Dorottya Czapkó, Borsod24, Szol24, Szabolcs24
Márton Gulyás, Partizán
Zsombor György, Magyar Hang
Mihály Hardy, Klubrádió
Zoltán Kovács, Élet és Irodalom
Tamás Német, Telex
Péter Németh, Népszava
András Pethő, Direkt36
Péter Pető, 24.hu
Gyöngyi Roznár, Nyugat.hu
Dániel Szalay, Media1
Dániel Szűcs, Szegeder
Ákos Tóth, Jelen
Péter Uj, 444
Gábor Vajda, Qubit
Blanka Zöldi, Lakmusz

Cover photo by Péter Somogyi (szarvas) / Telex

| Posted in Direkt36 | Comments Off on Editors stand by the attacked Atlatszo
02.29.24

How Orbán flooded Central Europe with millions of online ads during election season

Secrets of the Propaganda Machine

At one point in his 2024 State of the Nation address, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that “we cannot interfere in other countries’ elections, but we would very much like to see President Donald Trump return to the White House.” The Hungarian government’s stance on election interference has long been characterized by this tension: they talk about Hungary not interfering in other countries’ internal affairs – and state their expectation that others not interfere in Hungary’s – while at the same time regularly advocating for the re-election of foreign allies, from Trump to Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

However, there are signs that the Hungarian government is trying to shape public discourse in foreign countries not only through statements, but also through Hungarian state resources and taxpayers’ money — and, in many cases, even doing so during ongoing election campaigns.

In the autumn of 2023, the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office ran video campaigns on YouTube on the dangers of illegal migration in seven EU countries. These ads appeared on users’ screens a total of 8.35-9.7 million times, Direkt36 and VSquare.org found by analyzing Google’s online advertising transparency database. In two of the seven countries – Slovakia and Poland – the ads started appearing in the run-up to parliamentary elections, while in two others – Germany and Italy – the ads ran when provincial and local elections were taking place. The ministry in charge of these campaigns – and government propaganda in general – is led by Minister Antal Rogán.

In terms of views relative to population, the campaign was most intense in Slovakia, where between 1.6 million and 1.8 million video ads online could theoretically have reached between 29 and 33 percent of the population (the same ad can also appear more than once for the same user, according to Google’s database). These online advertisements could have reached internet users who are on YouTube and have not turned off ads, and who had been targeted by the Hungarian government on the basis of age, geography, interests, etc.

According to one expert with international experience in online political advertising campaigns, savvy advertisers set their ads to appear 5-7 times per user because that’s how many views it takes for advertising to be effective.

Both advertisements are in English, but while one of them offers via voiceover that “Hungary protects the EU from illegal migration,” in the other one, English subtitles accompany shots of the Hungary-Serbia border fence, partly filmed with night vision cameras, and tense music. The footage shows, among other things, the border fence being dismantled and the authorities protecting it being attacked from the other side of the fence. The advertisements thus formally promote the Hungarian government’s anti-migrant measures. At the same time, they also stress the dangers of migration and the violence of migrants.

These advertisements also appeared in countries when allies of the Orbán government, also campaigning with anti-migrant slogans, were competing in parliamentary or local elections.These ads aired in the late summer-early autumn of 2023, when the migration crisis in southern Slovakia was at its peak, with tens of thousands of people from the Middle East managing to make their way to Slovakia and even southern Poland — despite allegedly strict Hungarian border protection. In response, countries in the region from Austria to Poland introduced temporary border controls.

Hungarian advertisements have attracted the attention of Slovak politicians.

“As a government, and personally as the Minister of Defense, I have been informed about the Hungarian government’s interference in Slovakia’s electoral system and processes. This includes deliberately highlighting issues like migration, which was a top priority,”

said Jaroslav Naď, Slovak defense minister between 2020 and May 2023, in a conversation with our Slovak partner, the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak (ICJK.sk). Regarding these Hungarian online advertisements, Naď expressed his belief that the Orbán government was supporting the anti-immigration Smer party, led by old-new Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. (Naď, as a member of the then-governing OľaNO party and later as the leader of the Democrats party, is a political adversary of Fico.)

Poland’s Tygodnik Powszechny, the Hungarian edition of Radio Free Europe and the Czech news site E15 have separately reported that the Hungarian prime minister’s office’s advertisements have appeared in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, but the number of ads has not been known until now, as Google – which owns YouTube – only publishes details three months after an advertising campaign ends. It was also not known until now that the Hungarian government also advertised in Austria, Germany, Italy and Belgium, or that the ads ran simultaneously in seven European countries.

Neither the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office nor Google responded to our requests for comment.

“If you know the rules of the ads platform, this is how you can get around it”

Orbán’s Cabinet Office’s first video advertisement ran between September 28 and October 11 2023. The second ran from October 10 to 24, 2023 in the seven countries (but only the second of the two videos ran in Belgium). Google distinguishes between two types of advertising: political and non-political. The former is subject to stricter transparency rules. For example, the US company also discloses some basic information on what types of users advertisers target with political ads and how much money they have spent on them. However, the Hungarian government ran these videos as non-political ads, as they were not technically advertising a political party in Hungary or during domestic election campaigns. The transparency of non-political advertisements is significantly more limited.

This also means that Google’s advertising transparency database only reveals the start and end time when the ads ran and the approximate number of times that Hungarian state-sponsored advertisements appeared. There is no public information on the target audience or on the amount spent on advertising. When previously contacted by Czech news site E15, Google confirmed that the relevant Hungarian government ads do not violate the terms of use and, as they do not promote political parties or politicians, are not political ads.

“Google is remarkably lenient in its classification of what constitutes political advertising. Based on my experience, approximately 80 percent of advertisements deemed non-political by Google are identified and rejected as political by Facebook’s automated software check,”

one expert in online political advertising campaigns with international experience, who wished to remain anonymous, told us. “Being categorized as a political ad on Google restricts your audience targeting options significantly, but Hungarian government ads running in foreign countries, not qualifying as political, allowed advertisers much broader targeting capabilities,” the expert noted.

The European Union has recently stepped up its regulation of social media platforms and their use of user data for advertising. Current EU regulations prohibit Meta (Facebook), Google and other platforms from the previous practice of essentially freely sharing users’ personal data with advertisers, particularly in the case of possible use for political ads.

“Nevertheless, by understanding the internal rules of these ads platforms, you can get around them to access a broader set of tools by attempting to register your advertisement as non-political,”

the expert on online campaigning added. In the context of the Slovak elections, this strategy enabled the Hungarian government to define its target audience for officially non-political ads with much more precision than Slovak political parties, which were restricted to running ads explicitly labeled as political.

The exact number of times the Hungarian government ads appeared is not publicly available. We only know the range of views, from the minimum and maximum possible times people saw it. At the same time, the number of views of the advertised videos on YouTube also does not reflect the number of times the videos have appeared to users via ads: According to Google/Youtube advertising rules, an advertised display of a video only counts as a full view – i.e. it only increases the number of views below a video on Youtube – if the user watches a short-duration video (that is, a video that is less than 30 seconds long) until the end, or a longer duration video (which is longer than 30 seconds) for at least 30 seconds.

Of the two Hungarian government videos advertised abroad, the first – which was aired before the Slovak elections and has no narration, only subtitles – is 37 seconds long and has 1.1 million views on Youtube, which means that it has been watched for at least 30 seconds this 1.1 million times. The second video, which is 14 seconds long and has narration, has only 7600 views, which is the number of viewers who watched it from start to finish. It is also not disclosed how many viewers from which countries arrived at the two advertised videos.

However, there’s a more critical metric than the sheer volume of advertisements: “The key lies in ad frequency, or how many times an individual is exposed to the same advertisement,” the online political campaign expert told.

“The traditional benchmark within the industry is seven — that is, an advertisement needs to reach an individual seven times to be effective. In other words, it’s more impactful for a quarter of a million people to encounter an advertisement four times than for a million people to see it just once. Professional advertisers, like the Hungarian government, typically aim for an ad frequency between five to seven,”

the source explained. Additionally, the specific frequency at which the Hungarian government’s advertisements were broadcasted is not disclosed. “Such details are not made available in any advertising library [a public database of advertisements],” the expert added.

How much the Hungarian government spent on these foreign advertisements is also unclear. Following initial reports about the Hungarian government’s foreign ads in the Polish election campaign, Hungarian independent MP Ákos Hadházy attempted to obtain information through a public information request. However, the PM’s Cabinet Office avoided giving a direct answer, claiming that they do not keep a record of the advertisements in question. “The cost of advertising depends on more than just the number of impressions, or views; several other factors play a role. Market saturation, for example, or how many advertisers are competing for attention at the same time, can drive up prices, similar to the stock market. This is especially true during campaign periods when many are vying for visibility,” the online political campaign expert said. Additionally, according to the expert, the price of advertisements is significantly influenced by how precisely an advertiser defines its target audience.

According to Google’s advertising database, Slovak political campaign videos that were similar in impressions to the two Hungarian videos cost between €2,000 and €15,000 (currently equivalent to approximately 790,000 to 5.9 million HUF). However, this may not necessarily be indicative, as the target audience for the Hungarian “non-political” advertisements could be specified in much greater detail, potentially significantly increasing the cost of advertising.

“Hungary played an intensive role”

Parliamentary elections were held in Slovakia on September 30, at which point the Orbán government used other means – such as an interview with Robert Fico broadcast on Hungarian public media during right before the election, when all Slovak campaigns were meant to be silent – to support the campaign of the old-new Slovak prime minister, a close ally of Viktor Orbán. Fico’s victory was of particular interest to Orbán’s party, as they counted on the populist-leftist Slovak prime minister’s help both to revive regional cooperation in the Visegrad Group and to block the so-called Article 7 procedure against Hungary in Brussels. Robert Fico and his far left-wing and nationalist allies, who campaigned with pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian slogans, like Orbán’s government, eventually won the election.

Google’s database shows that on September 28, two days before the Slovak election and thus during the campaign blackout period under Slovak law, the Hungarian government started running YouTube ads, the first of which was seen 900,000 to 1 million times. The second, which ran after the election, was seen somewhere between 700,000 and 800,000 times. The combined number of impressions of the two ads is roughly one third of the population of Slovakia. It is not possible to say from the public details of Google’s database to what extent views of the first ad were concentrated in the days before the Slovak parliamentary elections (the ad continued after the election, so some of the views may well have been after the votes were cast).

“I was surprised by this number. It was indeed a very intensive advertisement targeting Slovakia on the issue of migration. I see no other reason for this than the Hungarian government’s interest in helping to raise the issue,” said former Slovak defense minister Jaroslav Naď to ICJK.sk regarding the Hungarian government advertisements.

“And of course, you’ve seen how Smer [the party of current Prime Minister Robert Fico] constantly stoked up fear against migrants, so this [ad] fits perfectly into the debate,”

the former minister added.

“If I wanted to influence public opinion in this way, especially just a day or two before the Slovak elections, I would do the same,” Naď stated, emphasizing that “this kind of behavior is wrong and unacceptable. When we ran campaigns, we always targeted the citizens of Slovakia, communicating with our own citizens, not those of other countries.” According to the former defense minister, “Hungary indeed played a very intensive role in Robert Fico winning the elections.”

By comparison, according to Google’s advertising database, more intensively advertised videos put out by Slovak political campaigns had somewhere between 1 and 2 million impressions, with the most viewed video advertisement belonging to Slovakia’s right-wing liberal Freedom and Solidarity party (that video made more than 10 million impressions). However, these videos were all run throughout the campaign – and before the period of campaign silence – and thus competed with each other, while the Hungarian government’s video ad, labeled as non-political, was launched just as the campaign silence period began.

Poland elected a new government on October 15. Another Orban ally, the populist right-wing Law and Justice party, in power since 2015, was favored to win — but a coalition of center-right, centrist and left-wing parties won the election, which produced record turnout. In Poland, between the end of September and mid-October, Hungarian government advertisements made a total of between one and a half and two million Hungarian government impressions, a number that is the equivalent of 4 or 5 percent of the Polish population.

It is not possible to say, partly because of Google’s limited information disclosure, which regions, cities and voter groups these ads targeted – nor do we know exactly what role, if any, they played in the outcome of the two countries’ elections.

The Orbán government’s involvement in the Slovak and Polish election campaigns was not limited to video advertisements. As the author of this article previously revealed in VSquare’s newsletter, key Orbán campaign strategist Árpád Habony and Hungarian government-linked advisory firm Századvég, including foreign affairs director Csaba Faragó, actively helped the campaigns of Orbán’s local allies in Central Europe. In Slovakia, this initially meant the center-left HLAS party, led by former prime minister Peter Pellegrini’s, and then Robert Fico’s Smer, while in Poland, it was the Law and Justice party. After Hungary’s Polish allies lost the election, Polish weekly Polityka reported that many in Law and Justice blamed the defeat on unnamed Hungarian campaign advisors (these Hungarians were not named at the time).

While there were no elections in Austria, the Czech Republic or Belgium at the time of the ads, there were local elections in Germany and Italy. On October 8, both the right and the far-right gained strength in the German states of Bavaria and Hessen, thanks in part to the fact that migration was a major issue in German campaigns. It is not known, however, in which provinces or cities the Prime Minister Cabinet Office’s advertisements were focused. In Italy, elections were held on October 22 in the autonomous region of northern Italy, centered on Trento, and were won by the candidate of the far-right Lega party, led by Orbán ally Matteo Salvini. Here, too, there is no information on exactly which areas of Italy the Hungarian advertisements targeted.

To date, the most significant known case of Hungarian government involvement in a foreign election was during the 2022 French presidential elections. Back then, the Hungarian MKB Bank financed far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s campaign with €10.6 million. As the Financial Times revealed, the request for MKB to support the French politician came from Viktor Orbán’s inner circle.

Karin Kőváry Sólymos (Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak) contributed to this article.

Cover by Péter Somogyi (szarvas)/Telex

02.26.24

“If you are new to this, I’ll see you through it all the way” – The internet is full of ads in Hungarian recruiting sex workers, but authorities see no problem with them

Direkt36

The ad, published in 2022 in Hungarian, may have even seemed innocent at first glance.

There is a picture of a blonde girl lighting a cigarette, with the caption reading “a multi-room private studio apartment in a prominent part of Lucerne, Switzerland, is awaiting pretty colleagues!” The ad doesn’t specify the kind of work involved, but there’s a pretty clear hint. It tries to lure applicants by claiming that “everything is handled by the owner”, even condoms.

Later on, it becomes even clearer what the ad is about. The bottom of the advertisement features a link to the studio’s website, which takes you to the Swiss website of an establishment where very flexible, sweet girls discreetly meet your personal erotic needs.

This ad was one of the 45,000 online sex work advertisements published in Europe in recent years, which Direkt36 examined as part of an international investigative project. The ads were scraped by a data journalist at the Dutch journalism center Pointer from a total of 34 websites, including Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Romanian and Hungarian ones.

The research showed that among the ads collected, those in Hungarian stand out. More than 6,000 are specifically targeting Hungary, almost twice as many as Slovakia and Romania.

Sex work has been legal in Hungary since 1999, but facilitating prostitution and profiting from the earnings of a sex worker is not. Hungarian laws apply to Hungarian citizens abroad.

However, opinions differ on whether these advertisements violate the law. The police told Direkt36 that such ads are illegal only in case they are misleading and the advertiser aims to exploit the sex worker. A lawyer who has represented sex workers for years, however, said that the advertisements do constitute the criminal offense of procuring. “The recruitment of sex workers, the posting of advertisements constitutes either procuring or the promotion of prostitution, depending on the specific content,” said Klaudia Makó. She firmly believes that any placement of this type of advertisement is illegal.

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The international investigative project has revealed that people who apply for such advertisements often become victims of exploitation. As the Dutch partner in the project, Pointer found, the conditions described in the advertisements are often too nice to be true and there is a high risk that candidates will end up being exploited. According to the UN World Report on Trafficking in Persons 2020, the use of such misleading advertisements is on the rise. Of the 79 victims of cases that ended in court, 31 were recruited via the internet – via advertisements, social media and websites. The method is efficient, with 296 out of 472 victims lured by overly tempting conditions.

According to Europol’s 2020 Summary on Online Trafficking in Human Beings, online advertising is advantageous to perpetrators for several reasons. For example, they can recruit people without meeting face-to-face, and social media is a particularly effective means to target potential victims. Europol’s study also shows that criminals create impressive websites on behalf of fake agencies, which they then advertise on social media, targeting potential victims based on their age, location and social status. Traffickers in Europe can also exploit legal discrepancies, as the definition of what constitutes a sex work-related offense varies from country to country.

“There is someone to drive the girls”

The team of 31 journalists from 12 countries collected 45,000 advertisements calling for sex workers from 2014-2023, mainly seeking applicants for employment in Western Europe. From the ads we built a database that provides a detailed insight into the world of the people running the prostitution business in Europe. Thousands of Hungarian-language ads were used to lure sex workers to Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany.

When analysing the ads, we found many advertisers who had been looking for sex workers for months, on several websites, and offering opportunities in several countries. The recurring advertisers mainly promised earnings up to several thousand euros per week, with transport, interpreters, advance payment of expenses, a super team, respectful clients and much more.

As in many cases, the initial search based on the websites and the phone numbers lead us nowhere, and inquiring as journalists also wouldn’t have got us closer either. We decided to contact them as a woman interested in the job. But to do this, we needed a credible story.

We created a young female character whose background and circumstances are similar to that of a typical victim of human trafficking for sexual exploitation. We relied on the help of social workers with experience in helping sex workers and victims of human trafficking.

The fictitious woman, Niki is 21 years old, grew up in state care and has never left her native county, Borsod. She has no big plans, but wants to be financially secure so that she doesn’t have to make ends meet as a low-paid worker. She is inexperienced, lacks self-confidence and wants to be loved. She has met local women who claimed to have made a lot of money as sex workers abroad, and it was these women who told her how to apply.

Aida Kokanovic of the Danish newspaper DR Nyheder, a member of the international project, helped create images of Niki using the AI image generator Midjourney. We then called 34 advertisers and agencies offering sex work opportunities to explore the reality behind the ads. Most of the numbers were unavailable or the advertiser did not answer the phone. Some of the people who answered our calls were very suspicious, but others were willing to answer. There were some who, although they had originally advertised work in Germany, were already looking for girls in Amsterdam.

In another interview, Niki was asked for a full-body photo, and if she could start in a week’s time in a red-light district abroad. Niki said that she didn’t speak any foreign languages, which, the friendly woman on the other end of the phone said, was not a problem, as clients communicate with the organizers.

“We can take care of everything,” the woman said, also explaining that they can arrange accommodation and transport for Niki.

“We can get you here, there is someone to drive the girls. I’ll advance you the fare and you can pay me back later. We can pick you up in Miskolc, no problem”.

The sex worker was to stand in the window awaiting clients, with the staff also advertising her online. According to the woman, workers are paid €100 for half an hour and €300 for an hour, but the hourly rate can go up to €600-1000. “If you want to make a lot of money, you need to provide more to clients,” she said.

The ads mentioned above are probably aimed at filling vacancies in brothels, but there are also agencies acting as intermediaries, only involved in recruiting. Just like companies looking for workers through recruiter agencies instead of advertising on their own.

The research, carried out by the international team of journalists has revealed that there are more than 100 agencies in Europe recruiting sex workers from Eastern Europe. One of these agencies is Meretrix, which apparently operates somewhere in the 13th district of Budapest, but the exact address and the identity of the company or person behind the agency are not revealed. In addition to their site, Meretrix offers sex work on several Hungarian job sites as well and looks for Hungarian women for brothels in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Previously they have been looking for models for Hungarian porn agencies.

The head of a Hungarian model agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Direkt36 that Meretrix had approached them years ago promising to “bring girls”. Meretrix’s cautiousness was characterized by the fact that the head of the agency never met their representative. The porn agency’s director said that when he asked the women whether their agent was male or female, they replied that they had no idea as they had also communicated with them via chat apps.

Niki was in contact with the person answering the phone number listed in the Meretrix ads via Viber, too. The chat in Hungarian revealed that the person liked Niki’s photos and assured her that she would make good money in Switzerland. There was no beating around the bush: Niki could not choose her guests, she could only keep half of her hourly rate, although the tips for extras were hers to keep, and the more requests she indulged, the more she would make.

The Meretrix agent suggested a ten-day stay for starters. When Niki indicated that she was new to the business, she was told to that it would be easier if she thought about the money and that her insecurities would be gone by the second time she works.

Niki wrote that she was inexperienced and didn’t know if she would meet the guests’ expectations, but was encouraged: “you’re pretty, you’ll earn well” and was offered a real-life meeting.

Meretrix is also keen on comforting inexperienced applicants interested in the online ads. In one of them, it is specifically stressed that If you are new to this, I’ll see you through it all the way. Niki eventually agreed to board a minibus to Switzerland at Budapest’s Keleti Station on a Sunday morning in February, for which she had received a phone number and other details from Meretrix.

Direkt36 was there at the agreed time in the parking lot of Keleti station, watching as both male and female passengers boarded the white minibus. The bus takes anyone to Switzerland or back, and the bus driver’s phone number appears several times in a Facebook group for people commuting between Switzerland and Hungary.

We sent several questions to Meretrix’s email address featured in their ads. There was no reponse, but their website was subsequently taken down.

Another agency, Erotik Arbeit, which also recruits sex workers, promises earnings of 3,000 to 6,000 Swiss francs a week. The studios, which are open to “attractive young, slim girls” as well as “mature and experienced ladies”, are located in St. Gallen, on the triple border between Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The website is looking for sex workers for brothels such as WG47, Mon Cherie, City 48, Eros Escort and G2 Studio, the same places as the ones featured in Meretrix’s ads.

Direkt36, as part of the international project, has discovered that the website of the St. Gallen studios was created by the same man whose name is listed as the employer in a document uploaded to Erotik Arbeit’s website. In fact, a source with access to the Swiss commercial register confirmed to SRF journalist Léa Burger, who is part of the international project, that the man is also the owner of the studios. An official document revealed that at least 48 Hungarian sex workers were employed at one of the studios in May 2021. Their names have been blacked to protect them, but remain readable.

Erotik Arbeit not only provides jobs in brothels in Western Europe, but also a a way to get there. On Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday mornings, a minibus departs from the Keleti Railway Station and takes sex workers directly to the studios. For those staying for two weeks or more, the agency will cover the cost of travel. Based on the phone number and departure times, the minibus is the same that was recommended to Niki by Meretrix.

Illegal or not?

Direkt36 has sent some of the sex work ads to the Anti-Trafficking Unit of the Police’s National Investigation Bureau (KRI NNI) to get their opinion.

“In this form the advertisements do not constitute a crime,” replied the police, adding that the ads do not qualify as recruiting or procuring prostitutes.

From a law enforcement point of view, they said, the advertisements in question raise an issue only if they aim to deceive and exploit the applicants. Examples of deception and exploitation include asking sex workers for more money than agreed, withholding their earnings, telling them who their clients should be or restricting their freedom.

Dr. Emese Borsodi-Buss, a prosecutor at the Nyíregyháza District Prosecutor’s Office, who specialises in human trafficking and prostitution cases, agreed with the police’s response. In her opinion, the wording of the advertisements is too general, and profit as a motive is not explicit.

Rooms in the Swiss studio WG47 - Source: WG47

Rooms in the Swiss studio WG47 – Source: WG47

On the other hand, Dr. Klaudia Makó, a former lawyer of the Association of Hungarian Sex Workers (SZEXE) said that the Criminal Code is very clear on sanctioning all forms of enabling sex work: recruiting sex workers and posting advertisements, depending on the specific content, constitutes either procuring or trafficking in human beings. As per the New York Convention, to which Hungary is a party, sex work itself is not prohibited by law, but those who make a profit out of sex workers are committing a crime.

Makó recalled that in 2018 the Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG) issued a guideline that is still in force today and binding for all prosecutors. In it the OPG essentially calls prosecutors to classify certain acts of crime related to prostitution more severely, as trafficking in human beings.

According to the Penal Code, trafficking in human beings is also committed by “recruiting another person for work or labour (…) for the purpose of obtaining a regular benefit by deception (…) or by abusing the vulnerable position of the victim (…)”.

We got back to the police if, in light of the OPG’s guideline, they wanted to reconsider their position on the ads, but despite several requests they did not respond.

The president of SZEXE, Ágnes Földi knows from victims who contact her association that the more vulnerable a sex worker is, the more likely she gets ripped off in certain brothels abroad. The agent who recruited them, for instance, may claim up to €100 a day from their income or a one-off sum of several thousand euros.

In 2019, 134 Hungarian victims were registered, and 166 in 2022, based on the contributions submitted by the member states, said police captain dr. Bálint Kolozsi, Head of the Anti-Trafficking Unit at KRI NNI, in response to a question from Direkt36. He added, however, that these data are not to be considered complete, nor can police investigations always substantiate the victims’ stories.

In Europe, cases of cross-border trafficking in human beings are investigated by Joint Investigation Teams (JITs) of the police forces of the country where the crime took place and the country of origin of the persons involved. In October 2023 for example, three members of a family from Mezőtúr, a small town in Eastern Hungary were apprehended, who are suspected of recruiting seven young, vulnerable Hungarian women for sex work in Switzerland a year ago. According to the police report, the male members of the R. family made the victims engage in sex work by making them emotionally dependent on them. The victims were taken to Switzerland where they worked in brothels mainly in Bern, Lucerne and Zollikofen.

According to UN data, at least 1971 Hungarian citizens fell victim to trafficking for sexual exploitation between 2007 and 2020, with 178 Hungarian citizens detained in the course of investigations.

The prosecutor dr. Emese Borsodi-Buss told Direkt36 that in her experience those who work as sex workers in Hungary sooner or later end up abroad, and this also goes for the perpetrators who exploit them. By exploiting a single sex worker, perpetrators can make up to millions of forints a month. The most common destinations from Szabolcs County are Austria, Germany, Switzerland and sometimes England. Borsodi-Buss said that there is a pending case at the Nyíregyháza Court of Law with 11 defendants, accused of procuring and trafficking. The traffickers used to employ women in a legal brothel in Hamburg. Borsodi-Buss worked with the Hamburg prosecutor’s office through the Eurojust system.

“I was involved in the search for the Hamburg brothel, which was a serious German police operation involving special forces,” she said.

There is, however, a huge latency in the number of victims of prostitution-related crimes. According to Borsodi-Buss, there are several difficulties victims face when it comes to seeking help. The victim is often emotionally dependent on the perpetrator, so it does not even occur to them to confess. The lawyer Klaudia Makó also said that there are many cases, but they are very difficult to detect. The law does not consider the sex worker a victim, yet her confession is paramount to prosecute the perpetrator. But such confessions are hard to get, says Makó, since those who do not work under duress have no interest in exposing their pimps. Another complicating factor is that the defendant’s lawyer can ask the judge to summon the victim. The victim often has to meet the perpetrator after the traumatic events. According to Borsodi-Buss, in such cases, it is now possible to question victims remotely or to request that the interview take place in the absence of the perpetrators. “These options are increasingly being used by judges,” she added.

“They might kill me, but I’m getting out of here”

This is what happened to a fragile woman, now in her late twenties, who was trafficked in Denmark.

“I still wonder, at night, why it happened that way. I keep thinking that I was stupid. I’m very hard on myself. I am very angry with myself” – the woman, who asked not to be named, told us.

The woman said that in 2019 she kept fighting with her partner and they were separated for a while. That’s when a man came into her life, sending her a friend request as a stranger on Facebook and comforting her with kind messages and video calls.

“At the time, I needed the support, it was just the right time to have someone who spoke my language. I felt like wow, something was about to happen with him,”

she said, adding that the man posed as a real estate agent abroad and was very persuasive when talking about his work and intentions.

The man convinced the woman, who had never been abroad before, to meet him in Denmark. At the airport she was met by a group of men and began to feel that something was off. “When we got to the apartment, I was even more shocked because there were already two girls there. One of them was in a back room, with strange noises coming out. I asked if “people were really having sex there,” she recalled, adding that she was told to “relax, you’ll be changing in a minute”.

She trembled for days, couldn’t eat and felt sick after realizing what kind of danger she was in. One night, her Hungarian-speaking madam was severely beaten by the father of the man who led the criminal organization because according to him she did not do something right. The madam was taken to wash herself by the other sex workers.

“I never got a penny of what the customers paid. I was put out in front of them, they chose and we had to go. I got picked, I went, I bathed, got picked, went, bathed. They also took me out to forest areas. I feared for my life all the time”, she recalled.

“Then came the fifth day. I was taken to an apartment with men inside. There were several of them, some drunk, some high on drugs” she said, adding that she had to spend two hours there. She found out that her picture had been posted online as a sex ad weeks before she even got to Denmark. The photos were taken from her Facebook account.

The next day she was very sick, vomiting all day, but was still forced to have sex with customers. „I was like OK, they might kill me, but I’m getting out of here. Even death can’t be worse than what I went through” she said, and then went on with the account of her escape.

She pushed away two women associated with the criminals standing in her way, and ran out into the street, waving down the first car. There was a couple inside, and as she spoke some English, she was able to explain that she had been kidnapped and needed to go to the police. The couple put her in the car, and she ducked for cover in the back seat. They drove her to the police station and stayed with her until she gave her statement. In the meantime, her phone kept ringing and she got messages – first nice, then threatening.

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Later, as part of the Danish court proceedings, she was required to give a video testimony at the Danish Embassy in Budapest. Her abductor was in the courtroom, and they could see each other through the video. The man eventually received a 10-month sentence. He had this satisfied look on his face as if he was saying I got away with it. After serving the sentence, the woman saw him once at the local supermarket. Although months after the incident she still had panic attacks, her story ended well: she lives with her former partner and their children, trying to put the trauma behind them.

The “loverboy” method

The woman forced into prostitution in Denmark fell victim to a well-known tactic. According to several Hungarian experts in the field, perpetrators most often use the “loverboy” method to ensnare their victims: they seduce them by pretending to love them, only to force them later into sex work or at least persuade them to do so.

Dr. Szandra Windt, a researcher of human trafficking at the National Institute of Criminology told Direkt36 that it is common for perpetrators to ensnare their would-be victims via social media. She said that in most cases victims are young women in their twenties from poor family backgrounds who are looking for love, and often all it takes is a few kind words and the promise of a better future to make them fall for human trafficking. She said that in many cases pimps procure one or two women at home first, and when they see how much money they can make, they go West. Captain dr. Kolozsi of the KRI NNI elaborated on this to Direkt36, saying that criminals often exploit young victims’ hopes of a better future by manipulating their emotions.

“It is common to use social media platforms to contact, fake love and build a closer, trusting relationship with the victim,”

dr. Kolozsi wrote, adding that the online space provides increased anonymity, greater mobility, less financial investment and human resources for perpetrators, and allows for the exploitation of loopholes in the different national legal systems. This plays a major role in the fact that traffickers arrange work for victims abroad, as it is legal to run brothels for example in the Netherlands or Switzerland, but not in Hungary.

The “loverboy” method does not only work online. Máté Tóth, a worker for an organisation that helps victims of human trafficking, told us about his experiences in one of their shelters, whose address is secret and which, when you drive by, looks like a perfectly ordinary apartment block. According to Tóth, most of the victims grew up in foster homes, without a family.

“The institutions are surrounded by herds of pimps and loverboys. These girls are looking for a family and love, and are easy to seduce with two nice sentences. Then they escape, and are grateful for the pimps.”

Tóth says it’s common to be led to believe that they’ll make a living abroad in a year and live happily ever after, but in reality, they’re sold as soon as they leave.

This was the case with one of our sources, who told Direkt36 her story. The young, thin and very shy woman had been with her former partner for eight years, whom she had met in a foster home and who eventually persuaded her to become a sex worker in Germany. He promised her that she could earn enough money to buy their future home in two weeks. Her partner, who was part of a criminal organization, arranged everything for her, from travel to clients and relocations. The two weeks ended up being two years in total, and the woman did not get a penny of the €6-8,000 she said she made a week. Half of her income was taken away on the spot, and she sent the remaining half home to her partner and his family. She was given an old mobile, the number of which was known only to members of the criminal organization.

She worked in a total of 8-10 German cities, the criminal organization moved her every two or three weeks, because it is a way to earn more money. After all, the returning customers of the brothels expect to be able to choose from a new selection of prostitutes. The woman we talked to was also featured on Ladies.de, Germany’s largest sex advertising portal that offers sexual services in 12 German cities.

Finally, on one occasion, when she was allowed to return to Hungary, she asked for help from an organization that rescued her from her former partner’s family. As it turned out, the man ended up buying the house she had dreamed of, but was never allowed to move in.

The online space favors criminals

As captain Bálint Kolozsi said, the online space also provides a huge advantage for pimps who organise Hungarian sex workers abroad. Apart from the “loverboy” method, they also use other means to profit from their victims.

One woman, who also asked to remain anonymous, told Direkt36 how she was tricked last spring by an online job advertisement seeking kitchen assistants. “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” said the victim, who was 39 when she was abducted last summer. Her previous job had just ended when she saw the ad on Facebook for a job in Germany offering €2,000 a month, plus accommodation and travel. No language skills were required, “it was almost too good to be true.”

The woman applied for the job by text message, and the perpetrators even made a video interview with her about the kitchen work, and then arranged to pick her up with a minivan. She travelled to Germany with 11 other women, each of them was dropped off at different locations. She was met in Buchenau by a man who promised to show her around the accommodation, but when they entered the room he immediately took her documents and the €800 she had on her.

The man held the woman for 9 days, beating and raping her regularly.

“He had already offered me to his colleagues and told me to go out to the street, but I didn’t get there,” she said and then went on to explain how she managed to escape.

The man, who, as the police later revealed was wanted for, among other charges, assault, returned drunk to the hostel one night, allowing the victim to take his keys, sneak out, and get help at a nearby petrol station. German police are still investigating the case. She returned to Hungary with the help of the International Organisation for Migration.

Cover photo: Somogyi Péter (szarvas) / Telex 

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02.19.24

Some Hungarian hospitals have been facing a serious infection situation for years. Yet nothing happens to them

Hospital-acquired infections

After Direkt36 with the help of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union obtained and analyzed official data on hospital-acquired infections in Hungary between 2017 and 2022, a more detailed picture was revealed of the situation than ever before. The authorities responsible for public health have kept this information secret for a long time, but after a long litigation process, they have finally released it, giving us an insight into how many and what types of infections are being reported by inpatient care facilities in Hungary.

The database contains information on three types of infections that hospitals are obliged to report to the National Centre for Public Health and Pharmacy (NCPHP). These are infections that can cause serious complications or even death in hospital patients, especially if they are in a weakened condition.

Never before has such recent and extensive data on this subject been published in Hungary. The main findings of the analysis of this data are the following:

  • Some hospitals have consistently high infection rates year after year compared to others. The hospitals that have had high incidences of at least two types of infections in almost every year since 2017 were analyzed in more detail. These were the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Hospital in Kőbánya, Honvéd Hospital, Jahn Ferenc Hospital, the National Institute of Oncology (Országos Onkológiai Intézet – OOI) and Toldy Ferenc Hospital in Cegléd.
  • There have been few changes at the top of the list compared to our analysis based on 2015-2016 data, indicating that despite the institutions reporting the data, health authorities are either inactive or their efforts are ineffective.
  • The year after the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic, 2021, had the highest infection rates according to the figures, and although the following year saw a slight decrease in the incidence of hospital-acquired infections, hospitals still reported almost double the number of infections of all three types of infection compared to 2017.
  • One hospital’s data shows that the incidence of bloodstream infections in the neurology unit has increased sevenfold in six years, and in another institution, the incidence of all three infection types has at least doubled in the cardiology unit.
  • According to the data the majority of infected patients in one hospital’s unit did not survive their hospital stay in 2022. However, this does not mean that the infection caused their death, as hospitals only report a link between the infection and cause of death in a fraction of cases.

This article is a follow-up to Direkt36’s series of articles called Semmelweis Project launched last autumn, in which we showed that the government is aware of the serious problem of hospital-acquired infections (or nosocomial infections), but is trying to hide it from the public. In our previous articles, we used data from 2015-2016 to rank how hospitals are performing compared to each other in terms of hospital-acquired infections, but we have since received data for 2017-2022.

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While the database obtained by Direkt36 contains more detailed information on hospital-acquired infections than ever before, it does not show the complete picture. It only includes infections that are reported by hospitals to the NCPHP.

However, this institution and other authorities recognize that the reporting discipline of hospitals is loose.

The database also reveals that some active inpatient facilities have not reported any infections in six years, but there is little chance that there have been no infections at all. András Csilek, an infectologist and chairman of the Hungarian Medical Chamber’s Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county organisation, told Direkt36 that there are always nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections in active inpatient units such as internal medicine, surgery, pulmonology and urology, and if they report that they have not had any, that is certainly not correct in his opinion.

We tried to get a response to the results of our analysis and the questions raised from all the hospitals concerned, as well as from the authorities responsible for public health. The majority of hospitals did not respond, and the NCPHP wrote this despite the fact that the hospital rankings we shared with them were developed with a nationally recognised biostatistician who used methods to filter out factors that could distort the comparison.

Those infections are called hospital-acquired infections, which develop during the process of receiving healthcare. András Csilek tried to give Direkt36 a nuanced picture. He told us that the bacteria that later become pathogens are often already present in patients when they are admitted, but have not previously made them ill, while weakened immune systems and invasive procedures increase the chances of infection.

The annual rankings of hospital-acquired infections

Below you can see the rankings of Hungarian hospitals by different hospital-acquired infections. At the top of the charts are the hospitals with the highest incidence rates, and at the bottom are the hospitals with the lowest. The rankings are based on hospital-acquired infection data from 2017-2022. Our analysis of data from previous years, 2015 and 2016, can be found here.

The „Incidence” column shows the number of infections per 100,000 patient days. To make the rankings, we used statistical methods to reduce distortions caused by the different sizes of hospitals, the different types of hospital units, and patient groups. You can also filter by location and hospital name in the search box. By clicking on the years under the heading “data for other years”, you can access the rankings of hospitals for that particular year.

Those who want to know a more detailed explanation about the statistical modelling used to produce the rankings can find out more here. On the link you can also find out how we have filtered out from the list the institutions that have reported hospital-acquired infections to the authorities, but the statistical model cannot determine the ranking of them due to the limited data available.

On the first chart, hospitals are ranked by the prevalence of infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens that are resistant to many antibiotics. Multidrug-resistant pathogens are bacteria that can cause serious pneumonia, wound infections, urinary tract infections or even sepsis, especially among elderly or already sick patients.

The second chart shows which hospitals have had the highest incidence of clostridium difficile (CDI) over the years, a bacterial infection that causes severe diarrhea and dehydration and can even lead to life-threatening inflammation of the intestines.

The last table shows the rankings by incidence of bloodstream infections. Bloodstream infections occur when a pathogen enters the blood and then spreads to other organs which can be infected and shut down. It causes death in a significant number of cases.

If you want to see how infections have developed in the different hospital units in a given year, you can download the figures here and the graphs here. The original data given by the NCPHP can be downloaded from the links at the bottom of this article.

To analyze the data, we asked again Tamás Ferenci, one of the country’s most respected biostatisticians, for help. To reduce distortion due to differences in the mix of patients treated in different hospitals, he again used the same tried and tested method as he did with the 2015-16 data. For better comparability, he performed the analysis at the unit level instead of treating hospitals as a whole, and then made statistical corrections, but separately for each year.

There were no difficulties in creating yearly rankings, but it turned out that the possibilities for comparing individual hospitals and how their units changed over the long term were limited. The problem of the variation of patient mix is not only between different hospitals in the same year, but also between different years of the same hospital: new procedures may be introduced, possibly with a higher risk of infection, and patient characteristics (age, co-morbidities) may change over the years. Differences in the patient mix have been detected by using the so-called Cost Per Weighted Case numbers (that show how much funding a hospital receives for a patient and thus measures, the severity and complexity of the case). However, this solution only works for analyses of a given year. These figures are not constant: the National Health Insurance Fund recalculates them from time to time, so they cannot be used for long-term analysis. This means that comparisons between hospitals can only be made within a given year, and comparisons between different years are limited.

However, five hospitals have been at the top of at least two infection types in almost every year since 2017.

We investigated these hospitals – several of which were already featured in Direkt36’s series of articles last year – and took a closer look at which units have had the biggest increase in the incidence of hospital-acquired infections.

Watch Direkt36’s  documentary  on hospital-acquired infections with english subtitles!

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A serious problem in Cegléd

The charts above show that certain hospitals are consistently at the top of the hospital-acquired infection rankings. One such example is the Toldy Ferenc Hospital in Cegléd, which has been among the worst performers in all infection types almost every year, meaning that it had high infection rates in the past six years.

Toldy Ferenc’s internal medicine unit experienced an increase in the incidence of all three infection types between 2017 and 2022: the incidence of clostridium difficile and bloodstream infections more than doubled, infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens increased more than one and a half times. The surgery units’ incidence of infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens almost doubled in six years.

Cardiology proved to be the most problematic unit, as our analysis showed a dramatic increase in the prevalence of all three types of infections with CDI more than three and a half times, multidrug-resistant pathogens almost three times, and bloodstream infections were twice as common in 2022 than in 2017.

According to the data between 2017 and 2022, 2026 hospital-acquired infections were reported, of which in 801 cases the patient did not survive the hospital stay. According to the NCPHP, since infections can overlap – meaning that a patient may have been infected with more than one pathogen – the actual number of patients who contracted infections and the number of deaths may be lower.

We wrote about Toldy Ferenc Hospital in our article last year, after the highest incidence of infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens had occurred there in 2015-16. The hospital’s management was aware of the shortcomings years ago, and published a pessimistic report setting out their strategy for 2018-2023. They mainly complained about the outdated infrastructure and the staff shortage, and acknowledged that the hospital had problems in reducing infections.

From our analysis, it seems that whatever was included in the strategy, there is still no solution to the conditions at the Toldy Hospital, which still had the highest incidence of multidrug-resistant infections in 2022. Dr. Ágnes Galgóczi, Head of the Hospital Hygiene and Public Health Department of the NCPHP admitted to Direkt36 in August 2023 that they were aware of the infection data of the Toldy Ferenc Hospital. According to her, however, it is not the responsibility of the NCPHP, but of the maintainer and management of the hospital to solve the problem. Direkt36 sent detailed questions to the National Hospital Directorate General, which funds the state hospitals, and to Toldy Ferenc Hospital, but none of the institutions responded to our request.

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On top of the charts for years

Like Toldy Ferenc Hospital, Jahn Ferenc Dél-pesti Hospital has consistently been among the most problematic hospitals for several types of infections in almost every year that we examined.

Although the prevalence of infections has been somewhat reduced in the internal medicine unit which has a higher risk of infections, several units have reported a multiple increase in hospital-acquired infections. The incidence of bloodstream infections in the intensive care unit, which is also considered riskier in terms of infections, almost tripled in six years to 2022.

In the psychiatric unit of Jahn Ferenc hospital-acquired infections have been rising year after year,

even though this department does not typically perform surgery or serious invasive procedures – a medical procedure that invades (enters) the body, usually by cutting or puncturing the skin or by inserting instruments into the body – but at most injections, infusions or catheters. However, 11 cases of infection were recorded in 2022, 8 of which ended with death.

According to infectologist András Csilek, there are no more infectious patients in psychiatric units than elsewhere. If there are many infections reported, it is probably due to a “technical” reason, someone filled the spreadsheet wrongly and nobody noticed. He said it is possible that because many people are admitted to psychiatric wards with poor hygienic conditions, often homeless people straight from the street, who cannot be transferred to another ward because of their mental state, can infect the whole department.

The Jahn Ferenc Hospital did not report that the death of any psychiatric patient was linked to the infection. They registered that no connection between the death and the infection was found, or the connection was “unknown”.

In the neurology unit, the number of infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens has increased four times and the number of bloodstream infections has doubled. 1436 infected patients have died in the hospital in 6 years and 274 cases of infection were recorded as possibly being related to patient death.

The conditions at the Jahn Ferenc hospital were described in our previous article, as it was the hospital where no one noticed a dead body lying in the toilet for days in 2016. The cleaning company they had been working with was dismissed, but two years later they were hired again because they were 60 percent cheaper than the other tenderers.

In addition to infrastructural problems, according to its report the hospital is also facing a shortage of staff with 332 posts vacant in 2022, rising to 447 in 2023.

Debt and infections at the Honvéd Hospital

Another large hospital in Budapest, the Honvéd Hospital, has not managed to reduce hospital-acquired infections over the years. Between 2017 and 2022, the incidence of all three types of hospital-acquired infections increased in almost every department performing invasive procedures, including intensive care, internal medicine and surgery, which are particularly high-risk in terms of infections.

Neurology was one of their most critical departments, with CDI incidence tripling, prevalence of infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens increasing three and a half times, and bloodstream infections being seven times more common in 2022 compared to 2017 data.

Urology and cardiology also saw a rise in the incidence of all three infections.

Between 2017 and 2022, there were 1,841 reported cases of deaths of patients who had contracted a hospital-acquired infection at the Honvéd Hospital. The institution found a link between the patient’s death and the infection in 19 cases.

In 2019, a letter from a doctor working in the emergency care center described the conditions of his department as unacceptable and dangerous. According to the doctor, there was not enough equipment, staff were not paid overtime and, due to a lack of specialists, staff from other departments who had no experience in emergency care were transferred to their unit.

The problem was acknowledged by Béla Burányi, the head of the emergency care center at that time, who called the department dysfunctional. The interesting aspect of the case is that the NCPHP carried out an on-site inspection in the emergency care center of Honvéd Hospital a few months before the scandal broke and found everything in order.

Also in 2019, bedbugs covered the beds of on-call staff.  Because the head of the department did not take the problem seriously at first, the staff had to live with the situation for weeks until the resting places of doctors and nurses in several on-call rooms became unusable.

The Honvéd Hospital did not respond to Direkt36’s request for comment.

Mice and infected people in Bajcsy hospital

The Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Hospital in Kőbánya has problems with hospital-acquired infections, according to our analysis. Between 2017 and 2022, 2892 hospital-acquired infections were recorded, and in 1366 cases patients with infections were reported (one patient can have several infections) to die in the hospital. According to their registrations, 361 death cases were linked to hospital-acquired infections. This figure is remarkable because it is much higher than elsewhere.

While, for example, in the Honvéd Hospital an average of one in 100 infected patients who died was found to have a connection between the infection and the patient’s death, the same conclusion was reached in a quarter of cases at Bajcsy.

András Csilek told Direkt36 that it is impossible that there is a difference of twenty-five times between the data of the two hospitals. At the same time, he said, it is not necessarily a manipulation of the reports, because the two hospitals may use different criteria to establish a link between infection and death. The infectologist said that the problem is rather that it is not at all certain that anyone in the authority has noticed the glaring difference or has thought about how to establish and implement a standardised methodology.

“If the journalist sees the difference, the authority probably sees it too, it just doesn’t address it. Or they don’t have the resources and the data goes to waste,” said Csilek.

At the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Hospital, hospital-acquired infections were most problematic in surgery, internal medicine, infectology and intensive care units. There have been some very critical periods, for example, in 2021, 14 CDI cases and 56 bloodstream infections were recorded in the ICU from the beginning of February to the end of April.

In January 2019, Bajcsy appeared in the news when an outbreak of diarrheal disease forced the closure of several wards. In November 2019, a mouse was filmed in one of the paid rooms. In May 2020, there was a scandal when two nurses cared for patients with coronavirus with their faces uncovered because they had difficulty breathing under their masks. At that time, 24 staff members were infected. The hospital had such an abnormally high mortality rate during the coronavirus outbreak (one in three patients reportedly died) that the opposition party MSZP tried to clarify the situation in parliament, but the absence of government MPs resulted in the Public Welfare Committee meeting being inconclusive.

A surprise: National Institute of Oncology

The National Institute of Oncology (OOI) in Ráth Görgy Street, Budapest, is one of the best-equipped specialized hospitals in the country, with better-maintained buildings and infrastructure than the Toldy Hospital in Cegléd, which has been ranked at the top of our hospital-acquired infections lists for years.

From 2017 to the end of 2022, 822 hospital-acquired infections were reported in the National Institute of Oncology, of which 199 ended in death. Of these,108 cases (meaning every second  case) were reported to be linked to a hospital-acquired infection.

The OOI management, when contacted by Direkt36, said that they considered it unprofessional to compare the infection data of serious cancer patients treated at the OOI with patients in other hospitals. The OOI wrote this even though, as we pointed out in our correspondence, Direkt36 was analyzing data at the unit level, comparing oncology only with other oncology departments, and even within that department, we were trying to reduce differences in patient mix.

The OOI also stressed in its response that their institution “provides the highest level of intensive care due to the radical cancer surgery and the lung transplant program, including ECMO”, which is an invasive procedure with a particularly high risk of infection.

The OOI also highlighted in its response that their institution “provides the highest level of intensive care due to the radical cancer surgery and the lung transplant program, including ECMO”, which is an invasive procedure with a particularly high risk of infection.

In its response, the National Institute of Oncology also pointed out that other hospitals are less thorough in detecting cases of infection and less disciplined in reporting data. In its reply to Direkt36, the institute included a table showing how many cases of each type of infection were reported between 2017 and 2021. However, in almost all cases, the figures differed from those in the NCPHP’s large database, which are also supposed to be reported by the OOI (there were some positive and some negative differences). We asked the NCPHP what the reason for this might be, but they did not answer our question.

The authorities’ data still does not seem reliable

The database obtained by Direkt36 also revealed several shortcomings of the reporting system. Hospitals reporting infections often leave certain fields blank. One example is whether the patient was isolated after being diagnosed with an infection caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens. In addition to yes and no, the options also include unknown, but in Toldy Ferenc hospital, for example, this field was left blank in 87 cases in 2021.

For patients with CDI, it is not revealed whether they have been isolated or not because no column in the database would answer to this.

András Csilek infectologist told Direkt36 that the oddities in hospitals reporting on the isolation of infected patients may be due to hospitals’ reluctance to admit that they are sometimes unable to comply with strict rules. Often there are not enough empty rooms or beds and it is physically impossible to move infected patients, and the hygienists who write the reports are not completely honest. “I can understand them in a way,” says Csilek, “who would like to make the situation look bad?”

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Hospitals also very rarely register that the infection was linked to the patient’s death. In 2022, for example, the NCPHP reported that 34-42 percent of patients who contracted an infection did not return home, but hospitals only linked the infection to the patient’s death in 4-6 percent of cases.

The NCPHP itself recognizes that hospitals that report infections as required by the law look worse than those that fail to register cases. As we reported in our article last year, during the lawsuit filed for the latest data on hospital-acquired infections, it was argued that “low infection rates may be the result of insufficient infection identification rates (…) for example (e.g. very few blood samples are taken by doctors, so that a low number of bloodstream infections are laboratory-confirmed, which is required for reporting) or loose reporting discipline.”

Ildikó Remetehegyi, a specialist officer of the National Directorate General of Hospitals, who herself has experience as a hospital hygienist, gave a skeptical assessment of the NCPHP’s annual reports on hospital-acquired infections at a conference on infection control and patient safety last autumn.

“The data in the annual report are not valid, so the analyses based on them are flawed, and the strategies based on them are therefore ineffective,” she said. She said institutions manipulate their numbers to make the data “look pretty” and poor data quality does not allow progress to be made in the field. She also pointed out that fourteen percent of hospitals do not report hospital-acquired infections at all, and some submit that they had zero infection.

András Csilek said that nosocomial infections always occur in the inpatient departments of internal medicine, surgery, pulmonology and intensive care. However, among the institutions that have not reported any infections in the last six years is the Farkasgyepű Institute for Pulmonology, which has three pulmonology departments.

Direkt36 asked the institute how it was possible that they had not had any infections in six years, but they did not reply.

NCPHP: Thorough work, but misleading

György Surján, the NCPHP’s director of infection prevention and epidemiology, admitted at a press conference in November that Direkt36 had done a mathematically thorough job with the hospital infection rankings, but also called them “misleading”. He said that he was sorry that we had not approached them for help, because the NCPHP is willing to work with any expert on hospital infection data. “As far as the request is concerned, I was talking about a request from experts, not a request from the press”, he replied when we contacted him regarding this article.

Direkt36 has asked the NCPHP for help on several occasions in the past, we interviewed one of their staff, and we sent them a detailed series of questions before the publication of our “Semmelweis Project” article, to which they did not respond.

Direkt36 was not invited to the press conference in November, but encouraged by his statement, we emailed György Surján after obtaining new data. We sent him the methodology of the statistics we use and asked for his help to make our analyses more accurate. However, the director was not open to cooperation.

 

The original databases of hospital-acquired infections reported by institutions, which Direkt36 obtained with the help of the HCLU from the NCPHP, can be downloaded from the links below:

– Clostridium difficile infections – 201720182019202020212022

– Infections caused by multi-resistant pathogens – 201720182019202020212022

– Bloodstream infections – 201720182019202020212022

Cover photo by Péter Somogyi (szarvas) / Telex

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02.17.24

How Viktor Orbán tried to extinguish the pedophile pardon scandal that shook his government

Pardon scandal

By 8 February, the whole country was abuzz with the scandal that had broken out six days earlier when it was reported that Hungarian President Katalin Novák pardoned the accomplice of a convicted pedophile, but former justice minister Judit Varga, who countersigned the pardon, seemed completely calm that day.

At the Norwegian embassy in Budapest, she met with ambassadors of European countries for a nearly two-hour-long working lunch, the official topic of which was the upcoming EP elections.

Varga was previously expected to head Fidesz’s election list and she was talking to diplomats about what she anticipated to see during the campaign. According to one participant, Varga seemed “cheerful, confident” and gave no indication that she feared the pardon scandal would break her career.

When the subject was raised at the ambassadors’ meeting, Varga calmly said of her own role that as justice minister she had no choice but to sign the pardon application already accepted by Katalin Novák. “Who am I to question the pardon decision of the President?” – Varga said, according to one of the participants.

Just over 48 hours later, however, Varga also tendered her resignation and announced her complete retirement from public life. The turn of events in her case thus showed the speed with which events moved within the governing Fidesz party and the government as leading politicians were dealing with the pardon issue.

Over the past week, Direkt36 has spoken to several sources with close ties to the government who have insight into what happened behind the scenes. The sources, who have requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, have told us how the government and Viktor Orbán personally handled what was perhaps the biggest domestic scandal of the past fourteen years of Fidesz government.

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The Prime Minister’s staff did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

“They were unprepared”

On Friday 2 February at 10:28, 444, an independent news site, published an article reporting that President of the Republic Katalin Novák had pardoned the former deputy director of the Bicske children’s home in April, who had been convicted for helping to cover up pedophile crimes committed by the director of the institution.

As the news began to spread in the media outside the government, it quickly caught the attention of the office of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, known as Karmelita, where Antal Rogán, who runs the government’s communications and propaganda machine, also works.

Sources close to the government who were familiar with the events said that Orbán and his entourage had been caught off guard by the news. “It took the government completely by surprise, they were unprepared. Neither the president nor Judit Varga had informed Orbán and his party about the pardon case when the decision was made [in April last year],” said one source, who had spoken to several senior government officials in recent weeks.

Another source, who has spoken to several people close to Orban in recent days, had similar information. “The reaction, the confusion at the beginning proves that there was no knowledge of it at the top level,” the source explained.

At the beginning, it really did seem that the professional and robust propaganda machine led by Rogán did not know what to do with the matter.

A few hours after the article appeared, on Friday afternoon, the president’s office known as Sándor Palace, which is located right next to Karmelita in the Buda Castle, issued a statement in which it tried to deflect the matter by saying that the pardoned man, Endre K., had not been convicted of pedophilia. They, however, it did not explain why Novák had made that decision.

Later that evening, the government propaganda machine was set in motion. An article was published on the Magyar Nemzet website, in which, among other things, they tried to play down the case by proving how good a person Endre K. was.

“The convict had been serving his sentence since 2021, spending a total of one year and five months in a penitentiary. According to our newspaper’s information, during this time there was nothing to criticise in his behaviour,” the newspaper, which is part of the propaganda machine, reported.

“The story has also reached the rightwing voters”

While in public the government tried to pretend that this was an insignificant story, behind the scenes they were aware of its seriousness.

“It has been on the radar of Karmelita since Friday,” said a source close to the government, who added that Orbán’s staff immediately demanded an explanation from the Sándor Palace.

The head of state’s office said that, as Direkt36 and Telex revealed last week, it was Zoltán Balog, a protestant bishop who has long had close ties with the Novak and who had previously served as a minister in the Orbán government, who lobbied for the pardon.

Balog has long been a leading figure in Fidesz circles, and his personal relationship with Viktor Orbán dates back to the 1990s. In 2007, Balog told the HVG newspaper that he had a “friendly loyalty” to Orbán.

Even though Novak’s office invoked such an old confidant, it was not enough for the prime minister and his staff. “Orbán did not accept the excuse that Balog was behind this,” said a source close to the government, who added the prime minister’s position was that “Novák is the president of the republic, she decides, it is her responsibility”.

But in the first days, there was still confidence within the government that they could get away with the scandal without suffering serious consequences. “They thought in the government communications center that the case would die down and not blow up,” said a source.

In the middle of next week, however, there was a sharp change in the Karmelita’s attitude.

The government has long devoted huge resources to polling on even the most insignificant issues and they have been making policy decisions on that basis. Polls were also taken on the pardon issue, and when the results came in on Tuesday and Wednesday, it was clear to the prime minister’s staff that they had miscalculated if they thought they could get through this without serious damage.

“Two things emerged. One was that the story reached the rightwing voters, and they [the government] tried in vain to block it. The other was that there was a very serious uproar within their own camp about this pardon,” said a source familiar with the details of the polling results.

The pardon case has also been particularly sensitive for Fidesz because the issue of child protection has been at the center of their policy for some time. They had previously passed a law called the Child Protection Act, which conflated pedophilia with homosexuality. The government even held a referendum on the subject.

After the polls, it was clear to the prime minister’s staff that they had to act, and Orbán himself was directly involved in the response.

On Thursday afternoon, 8 February, the prime minister posted a Facebook video announcing that he had initiated a constitutional amendment to make it impossible to pardon perpetrators of crimes against underage children.

According to a source close to the government, the announcement, which was humiliating for Novák because it further limited the president’s already weak powers, was intended to push the increasingly damaging issue away from Orban. According to the source, the prime minister – who was angered by the president’s apparently careless act – sent a message with the video that he personally would not get involved in the scandal and “would not save Novák.”

It was then clear for the top officials in the government that they would have to take some drastic action to close the case. According to a source close to the government, Orbán is a “cold-blooded professional in such crisis situations and acts immediately”, so it was already suggested on Thursday that Novák and possibly Varga should go.

The final decision was taken at an informal meeting of the Fidesz leadership on Friday, where the prime minister discussed the matter with his inner circle. “That sealed the deal, that’s where the resignations were decided,” said a source with insight into the matter, who said the meeting participants agreed that not only Novák, but Varga should also bear responsibility for the scandal.

Although Varga, as justice minister, did not initially support the pardon, she signed it after Novák insisted. “Varga had to go because the thinking was that they should finish the job” – said another source on how Orbán and his team thought the scandal should be put out.

They wanted to avoid a situation in which attention would be refocused on Varga as the person who countersigned pardon decision. “Orbán wanted a permanent solution”, said a source close to the government, who added the aim was to “permanently insulate the government from this case”.

Novák and Varga announced their resignations on Saturday, the day after Friday’s Fidesz leaders’ meeting.

“Not stuttering in English”

Orbán decided to cut loose the two politicians so quickly even though by doing that he lost two key members of his team.

He counted on both the support of both Novák and Varga for his increasingly ambitious foreign policy plans. According to sources close to the government, Orbán chose them for these positions – Novák as head of state and Varga to lead Fidesz in Brussels after the EP elections – precisely because he wanted them to play a major role in building his international alliances.

“Here were two women who look good, speak languages, argue well,” explained a source who had previously worked alongside Novák. The source emphasised that Novák speaks French and English fluently. “There were no such people in Fidesz before. The fact that someone from us speaks French in Brussels and not stutter in English is a serious matter,” the source added.

For Orbán, the process of deliberately building his foreign policy team to be, in the words of a source close to the government, “polyphonic” has now suffered a setback.

While he concentrates on such symbolic events such as meeting Donald Trump or speaking at the US Conservative Conference, he assigns technical matters to other people.

This is what he did with Varga, for example, when she was justice minister and was entrusted with some of the contentious negotiations with the EU institutions. As President of the Republic, Novák also went abroad a lot to negotiate, and although she represented the same interests as Orbán, she did so in a different style.

“Novák was stepping next to Orbán, but she does not threaten the prime minister because he still makes the decisions,” the source explained.

Another source close to the government said there was therefore now “a huge sense of grief” and many people did not understand how Novák could have made such a mistake. “They don’t understand why she was not alert. She knew what she was signing, she knew the concerns of Varga and the lawyers dealing with the pardon cases,” the source said.

While there is mostly just incomprehension about Novak, Balog, who played an important role in the pardon application, is judged by many people inside Fidesz more harshly. “They are now very angry with Balog,” said one source, adding that there is “elementary anger against the bishop”.

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02.12.24

Orbán’s former minister was pushing for the pardon that led to the fall of Hungary’s first female president

Pardon scandal

Since the publication of this article’s original Hungarian version, Balog acknowledged his role in the controversial presidential pardoning of a convicted pedophile’s accomplice, and stepped down from leading Hungary’s second largest church.

Although Katalin Novák has not publicly shared details of the presidential pardon that outraged the Hungarian public and led to her resignation, information obtained from within the Fidesz party and government circles helped clear the picture.

Several sources close to the government and the president’s office told Direkt36 and Telex that Zoltán Balog, the leader of the Hungarian Reformed Church, former minister of Orbán as well as advisor and long-time mentor of Novák, played an important role in the pardon.

A former senior official in the Orbán government said that his contacts in Novák’s office had said that it was Balog who had encouraged the president to grant a pardon to Endre K. The man had been a deputy director of an orphanage in the town of Bicske, and he was convicted for pressuring children to withdraw their testimonies against his boss, János Vásárhelyi, the director of the institution. The director himself is currently serving his jail sentence for sexually abusing children.

A source close to Novák also confirmed Balog’s involvement in pressing for a presidential pardon. The source added that, when the scandal broke and both Novák’s colleagues and Viktor Orbán’s team asked Balog for an explanation, the bishop defended himself by saying that it was not his personal decision, but that several people in the Reformed Church leadership wanted Endre K., who has good family ties to the church, to be pardoned.

An opposition politician with good government connections received the same explanation for the pardoning, both from the Fidesz faction and from Novák’s staff. “Politically, it was clearly Balog’s push for the pardon,” the politician said, adding that Novák’s entourage had long complained that “Balog had been showing up in the Sándor Palace to issue orders” and “he was meddling in everything”. The sources did not give details of the specific steps Balog had taken to grant the pardon.

Officially, Balog is a member of the president’s advisory council, but several sources familiar with the Novak-Balog relationship said that the Calvinist bishop had influence over Katalin Novak’s decisions that went far beyond his formal position. A former colleague of Novák’s, who was on good personal terms with her, said: “Kata would do anything for him.”

We tried to reach Zoltán Balog on several channels and sent him detailed questions but received no reply. Katalin Novák’s office did not react either.

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On his official Facebook page, Balog shared the following post two days before Katalin Novák’s resignation, at the height of the scandal: “Retreating for a few weeks to pray, think, read and write in the silence of God. What a gift!” According to sources, several people close to Novak complained that Balog had taken this step and went abroad to pray and think just as the scandal was escalating.

Balog and the orphanage

It is not yet clear why it was so important for Balog to issue this pardon. On February 2, 444.hu revealed that Novák, citing last year’s papal visit to Hungary as reason for the clemency, had pardoned Endre K., the former deputy director of the Bicske children’s home, who, according to the court, helped cover up the director’s sexual crimes.

However, Balog’s name had already been mentioned before in connection with the Bicske pedophile case. For example, he was the one who in 2016 proposed a state award for János Vásárhelyi, the director of the children’s home who was later convicted of pedophilia. Balog may also have known Endre K., the deputy director who was later convicted for the cover-up, as they participated together in a conference organized by his ministry in 2013 titled ”Inclusion and Protection of Children in and through Sport”, which was aimed at stopping sexual violence against children. According to an article in Hvg.hu, Endre K.’s father was previously mentioned in press reports as a local Calvinist church official, and the family had influential friends and acquaintances.

Several sources – former government officials, sources familiar with the Reformed Church and personal acquaintances of Katalin Novák – have unanimously claimed that Zoltán Balog and Katalin Novák have long had an especially close personal relationship.

Twenty years younger than him, Novák became a mentee of Balog, who guided her throughout her political career. From 2012, they had a close formal relationship for many years – first, Novák was then-Minister for Human Capacities Zoltán Balog’s chief of staff, then she became his state secretary. Although Balog left the government in 2018, he remained close to Novák, and after her election as president in 2022, he became a key member of Novák’s advisory team.

Over the years, Balog and Novák have taken several publicly funded exotic trips to far-away places such as Bogotá or, most recently, to Papua New Guinea in autumn 2023. The shared events and trips have continued despite the fact that Balog and Novák’s official functions have constantly changed. When they went to Bogotá, Novák was a state secretary and Balog was one of the prime minister’s commissioners. Recently, they travelled together to Papua as President of the Republic and presidential advisor (and bishop).

Judit Varga did not support a pardon

Information has also leaked out about the role of Judit Varga, the former minister of justice, who was also implicated in the pardoning scandal.

According to a government source familiar with the events from Novák’s side, what was first reported by far-right website Magyar Jelen, which is close to the Our Homeland party, is true: Judit Varga forwarded Endre K.’s pardon request to Novák without proposing it for support.

Several people close to Varga have confirmed that the then minister of justice did indeed not support the pardon.

However, Novák did sign it, according to sources, under the influence of Balog’s lobbying. According to a government source, Varga must have felt that she could not go against the president’s decision, however, she “made a mistake” by not asking the prime minister’s permission and by not informing Viktor Orbán at all. According to the source, Varga did so in good faith, because she thought that “the issue had been decided above her and her role was only formal.” (However, no other source could confirm that Viktor Orbán was not aware of the pardon decision in advance.)

According to a source close to Varga, the president’s staff probably expected that the case would not be made public, as presidential pardon cases are anonymous. But what happened here is that Endre K.’s case was referred to the Curia (the highest judicial authority in Hungary) for a third instance ruling. Then, in September last year, it was published in the Judicial Decisions Register official journal that Endre K. had been pardoned by Novák on April 27, 2023. This is how the previously anonymous case became identifiable, serving the basis for the 444.hu article on Endre K.’s case on February 2, thus triggering the scandal that led to the president’s resignation.

Balog’s possible role as head of the Reformed Church in the operations of the office of the President of the Republic and in specific pardon cases also raises questions because, under Hungarian law, the state and the church operate separately. The President of the Republic, as the guardian of constitutionality and as the highest public dignitary, is the number one representative of the Hungarian state, who, embodying the unity of the nation, must make decisions free of political and religious bias.

After the president’s resignation, Zoltán Balog shared a post on Facebook by a group titled “I stand by Katalin Novák”, which praises Novák saying, among other things, that “she is one of the few people who take responsibility for their mistakes.”

Sándor Joób and Gábor Miklósi contributed to this article.

Cover photo by Péter Somogyi (szarvas) / Telex

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01.31.24

Orbán’s true reasons for opposing Ukraine’s EU accession revealed

The Russian Connection

At the end of last year, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was in the spotlight again, after being the only EU leader to oppose starting Ukraine’s EU accession talks. Among the arguments put forward by Orbán were that Ukraine was too corrupt and that its accession would impose a huge financial burden on other member states.

But months earlier, in a closed meeting, he voiced very different concerns. They were rather related to fears about his own government’s geopolitical maneuvering. He said that Ukraine’s accession to the EU would change the balance of power in Europe and give the United States too much influence in the region.

This meeting took place last spring in the Hungarian Parliament. Orbán was speaking at what MPs called the “EU Grand Council,” a Hungarian parliamentary forum that must be convened before European Council summits. Here, the prime minister is usually briefing senior members of parliament, including several opposition MPs, on what to expect at the summit in Brussels in a few days’ time.

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According to regular participants in the “EU Grand Council,” the atmosphere here is much calmer than in public parliamentary sessions, and Orbán often shares his more far-reaching visions. Direkt36 learned about the details of the 2023 spring meeting from sources with close knowledge of the details of the discussion. We asked Orbán’s press chief several questions to confirm what the prime minister said but have not received any answers.

US masterplan

Last year, the European Council summit took place on March 23, and it did not yet include the start of Ukraine’s accession to the EU on its official agenda. Orbán, however, did dive into the issue at this closed session of the Hungarian parliament held a few days earlier, on March 20.

According to sources familiar with the details of the meeting, the prime minister told the participants that, according to intelligence reports, the United States had promised Ukraine that EU accession talks with the war-torn country would start in 2023. “Zelensky will go into the presidential election campaign with the message that negotiations with Ukraine have begun,” Orbán said, suggesting that this would strengthen Zelensky’s domestic political position.

(Orbán did not mention it, but Ukraine’s integration process has a history. The country was granted candidate status in June 2022, after applying for membership just days after the Russian invasion began. At the beginning of 2023, leading Ukrainian politicians expected that the accession negotiations could start soon. Although EU leaders voted to open negotiations late last year, it now looks likely that Ukraine’s presidential elections will not take place in spring 2024 due to the war.)

However, Orbán said that things would not go so smoothly, referring to the need for unanimity to approve the start of accession negotiations and that the Hungarian government can impose its will in certain issues. The prime minister said they would insist that Ukraine restore the rights that the Hungarian minority enjoyed before 2015. Orbán also said that this was a position that was easy to represent in public, a principle similar to “white men eat with forks and knives” (a Hungarian saying which means that something is evident).

Orbán also added that the Hungarian government would accept no new Ukrainian proposals in the field of minority rights, as it is unpredictable how they would actually work in practice. (The reference to the pre-2015 situation in minority rights in Ukraine has been part of the Hungarian government’s communication for some time, and foreign minister Péter Szijjártó posted about it on Facebook a few days after the parliamentary council meeting.)

Orbán, however, indicated that while he believes Hungary can achieve some results, it would not be able to put up any substantial obstacles to Ukraine’s accession. He said that, despite his objections, Ukraine’s EU membership would be “pushed through relatively quickly.”

He then turned to the geopolitical risks he sees in Ukraine’s EU membership. Orbán said that Ukraine’s accession would create such a “center of power” within the EU which would be dominated by the United States, militarily, politically as well as economically. This north-central European zone would include, according to Orbán, the three Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine – which has been deprived of parts of its territory by Russia –, and, to a lesser extent, Romania (countries which, fearing Russia, maintain closer ties with the US).

According to the prime minister, the importance of this north-central European zone is also shown by the fact that the US is now deploying weapons only in Poland and Ukraine, instead of Western Europe. “We will see about Belarus, one or two colorful revolutions could still happen there,” Orbán said, referring to the series of protests that broke out in several post-Soviet countries earlier – and which the Russians say were supported by the US. According to Orbán, a possible Belarusian revolution would make this US-dominated European zone even larger.

The prime minister also went on to consider how large the population of this bloc would be. Orbán gave concrete figures, calculating that the population of the Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine would exceed that of France so that this zone would be more influential than France. Orbán also said that he had shared this theory with Emmanuel Macron, but it was “not quite clear” to the French president “how should it all be added up” (meaning the population of these countries).

Orbán a francia elnökkel, aki állítólag nem értette a magyar kormányfő számításait – Forrás: Orbán/Facebook

Orbán and Macron – Source: Orbán/Facebook

In this 2023 closed session, Orbán also spoke about the figures he had shared with Macron. In the case of Ukraine’s future population, he put it at 20 million, suggesting that the population of the country, which was 32 million before the war, would decrease by that much because of the Russian invasion (Orbán’s own calculation slightly underestimated the French population and overestimated the number of Poles, because, if official figures are taken into account, Poland, with 38 million, the Baltic states, with 6.1 million, and Ukraine, with 20 million, together do not exceed France’s population of 68 million).

Orbán claimed that this bloc would be significant economically too. He expected that this would be due, among other things, to the inflow of US investments and resources for the reconstruction of Ukraine. All this, he said, will lead to “this new power center” being “economically stronger than Germany.” Orbán believed that this strategy, which he calls “American-Polish” strategy, would change the balance of power within the EU and reduce the influence of the currently dominant German-French axis.

“We had an offer to the good French and Germans, who did not accept it,” Orbán said of his earlier attempts to maintain the status quo within the EU. To this end, he proposed that the Franco-German axis should be complemented by the Visegrád Four (i.e. the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia), which, Orbán argued, could have consolidated the EU’s eastern half, had they been more closely involved in EU decision-making. According to Orbán, his proposal did not get support because Germany saw the Visegrád group as a rival, and tried to break it up instead. According to the prime minister’s logic, this is why, among other things, rule of law proceedings were launched against Poland. Orbán concluded that the Germans and the French have caused trouble for themselves, and instead of “strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy” they have offered Central Europe up for grabs to the Americans.

Orbán’s speech also revealed that this shift of power bothers him because it interferes with his own strategic vision. The prime minister said that he believes that the center of gravity of the world economy is shifting from the West to Asia, including China, mainly for demographic reasons. Orbán said he did not think it was right that “the Americans are reacting to this by splitting the world economy in two.” He said that in this process, we should not choose between the Western and Eastern hemispheres, but instead “we should be able to develop all kinds of relations with everyone in accordance with our own interests.” He said that Hungary should take advantage of the benefits of both Western and Eastern relations in the next decade.

Orbán listed a number of Eastern countries that he considered important for the implementation of this “Hungarian strategy.” He mentioned China, for example. He said that the Hungarian government also wants to deepen relations with India, but that they have not yet found a way to do so. He also added that, after the end of the war, “some kind of relationship with the Russians will have to be established within the new security framework.”

The prime minister has already shared some of these ideas publicly. For example, he said similar things in a speech to the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry a few days before this parliamentary meeting in spring 2023. Here, however, Orbán presented his theory much more briefly, and his comments on the role of the United States were limited, so they received less attention.

Money would flow into US pockets

The Hungarian government started to criticize launching Ukraine’s EU accession talks more vehemently after the European Commission made an official proposal at the beginning of November 2023. The Hungarian government reacted to the announcement by following the agenda outlined by Orbán, referring to minority rights as an obstacle. Later that day, Péter Szijjártó said in a Facebook video that Ukraine was not fit for EU membership. “We Hungarians continue to expect Ukraine to return to the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia all the rights they possessed in 2015,” he said.

In the meantime, however, Ukraine also took action. Early December last year, several laws necessary for the start of accession were adopted, including one on minority rights. The new law made it possible to teach in official EU languages, including Hungarian, in Ukrainian schools. In response, the Hungarian government said that it would evaluate the new law, but that it was still a long way from the restoration of the pre-2015 minority rights.

Orbán európai uniós vezetőkkel – Forrás: Orbán/Facebook

Orbán and leaders of EU – Source: Orbán/Facebook

In the period that followed, references to minority rights were scaled back in government communication. Orbán also started to use different arguments. One of them was that Ukraine was not ready for accession. “Ukraine is known as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. This is a joke!” he told the French weekly Le Point last December.

Among the prime minister’s counterarguments was that huge amounts of money would be spent on the reconstruction of Ukraine. For example, he told the Hungarian parliament on December 13 last year that Ukraine would receive ten times more in EU agricultural subsidies than Hungary was entitled to. “Moreover, a substantial part of this money would actually go into the pockets of the Americans, who have bought into the Ukrainian agricultural sector up to their necks,” he said. He added that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said that 90 percent of the money the US sends to Ukraine comes back to the US and helps create jobs and growth on US soil.

In a letter to European Council President Charles Michel in early December last year, Orbán suggested that the issue of Ukraine’s accession should be removed from the agenda of the next European Council. The European Commission’s proposal needed a unanimous decision by the leaders of the member states at the summit on December 14-15.

Orbán also told Michel that he did not agree with the €50 billion in financial support for Ukraine planned until 2027. The prime minister’s previous statements showed that he was opposed to this because he was against the EU taking a loan for it. Moreover, he felt that it was a waste of money because the Ukrainian army had not delivered the expected military results.

Orbán’s threat of a veto drew a lot of attention at the December summit. On the first day of the meeting, the opening of accession negotiations was approved. This was achieved by Orbán leaving the room at the moment of the vote, as suggested by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a pre-arranged way. The Hungarian government said afterwards that unanimity would be needed in many cases during the long accession negotiations anyway, so there would be still plenty of opportunity for them to veto.

The next day, however, Orbán vetoed the decision on the financial support for Ukraine, which was more urgent than starting the EU accession negotiations. It later emerged that Orbán was open to some kind of a compromise on this issue too. In early January 2024, Politico reported that the Hungarian government had suggested that the veto would be lifted if funding for Ukraine was reviewed on a yearly basis. This would mean that the Hungarian government would have the opportunity to blackmail the EU with a veto every year.

Illustration: Szarvas / Telex

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01.26.24

Uncovering the secret African mission of Viktor Orbán’s son

Fotó: Cnarr-Tchad / Facebook ; Illusztráció: Telex

Direkt36

A strange scene took place at the beginning of December 2023, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and his delegation arrived at the presidential palace of Chad in Africa. As the cars carrying the Hungarians rolled up to the entrance of the building, the foreign minister and members of his delegation started to walk towards the palace, but one of his escorts suddenly turned his back and headed towards the garden.

The young man getting out from a white van, wearing a green fedora, first looked at the camera recording the arrival of the Hungarian delegation, then turned his back and started to walk almost sideways, pulling a surgical mask from his pocket. The strange scene was captured in a video of the meeting taken by the Chadians and posted on Facebook on December 7, 2023, the day of the meeting.

After a cut in the video, the person in the green hat can be seen walking through the corridors of the presidential palace with his face covered by the mask, but later, in the footage recorded in the meeting room, he appears without the mask – although here the camera records him from the side, so his face is not visible. However, the video also includes a scene where the same man, walking behind foreign minister Szijjártó, enters another room – now without a hat and mask – and when he spots the camera again, he quickly hides behind a pillar. (As this can be seen in the video below.)

YouTube player

Direkt36, together with Le Monde, has tried in recent weeks to identify the young man, who took part in at least six African meetings between May 2023 and January 2024, from dozens of videos and photos of similar official Hungarian visits to Chad and Niger. This person appears only in the material uploaded by Africans, mostly barely recognizable, while he is mostly completely left out of official Hungarian reports. Although in most of the pictures we can’t even make out his main features, during our joint investigation we finally found a video from October 2023, a photo from December 2023 and a photo from January 2024, where his face was visible.

As it turns out, it was the Hungarian Prime Minister’s son, Gáspár Orbán.

Orbán Gáspár visits Chad in October 2023 – Source: Cnarr-Tchad Facebook

We uploaded the picture of the young man with mustache and slicked-back hair to two different facial recognition apps, and both of them clearly matched it with photos of the Hungarian prime minister’s son. We also showed the pictures taken in Africa to two sources who knew Gáspar Orbán personally, and both confirmed “one hundred percent” that it was him.

Gáspár Orbán had appeared differently in earlier photos, without a mustache and beard. The casual, fashionable style was also uncharacteristic of him. An acquaintance who met him last year confirmed that he now looks as he does in the African photos. And when the above photo of him with a mustache was uploaded to FaceCheck.ID, the app returned the following matches:

All photos except the one in the bottom right corner are of Gáspár Orbán

A colorful career

Based on publicly available photos, the facial recognition app has essentially created a virtual showcase of Gáspár Orbán’s colorful career full of abrupt changes. He first turned to professional football (soccer) in 2010, before giving up the sport in 2014 due to an injury, according to the official explanation. Gáspár Orbán, who was also studying law at ELTE university in Budapest, then moved to Africa, where he taught children to play football in Uganda with Christian aid organisation Empower a Child. “In Africa, I encountered the power of the living God in such a way that I gave my whole life to Jesus,” he said of his African experience shortly afterwards, when he entered the Hungarian public life as a leader of a religious congregation called Felház.

The soccer and missionary career was followed by another sharp turn – this time, he joined the military. In 2021, Telex revealed that Gáspár Orbán, who became a professional soldier in 2019, had been awarded a ministry scholarship (on Hungarian public funds) to study at the British Royal Sandhurst Military Academy. It is not known how his career has developed since he graduated from the academy. His last military photographs showed him in his regular uniform, with cropped hair and a shave.

In November 2023, the Hungarian Parliament voted to support the deployment of a 200-strong military mission in Chad and in the immediate neighbours of the sub-Saharan country, including Niger. The troops will be tasked with “advisory, support and mentoring tasks in the field”, which Hungary will use to help fight terrorism and tackle the root causes of migration, according to the official justification.

The mission to Africa, announced almost out of the blue, has surprised both the public and experts, with Telex writing in its article: “according to information leaked from the army, the risky and costly plan is not unanimously popular in military circles, and there are also questions about the Hungarian interest”.

Shortly afterwards, Direkt36 received information from a source with links to the Hungarian defense forces that the prime minister’s 31-year-old son, who has strong personal ties to Africa, plays a key role in launching the mission in Chad.

After hitting a roadblock in verifying information about Gáspár Orbán, Direkt36 sent public information requests on January 2 to three ministries – the Ministry of Defense (MoD), the Prime Minister’s Office and the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office – and shortly afterwards to a fourth – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFA). We tried to find out exactly what role Gáspár Orbán is playing in the preparations for the upcoming Hungarian military mission in Chad, with what authority, on whose staff, and where – wether in the immediate vicinity of his father – he is doing his work.

The MoD’s reply on January 17 only revealed that Gáspár Orbán “serves in the Hungarian Defense Forces as an officer”, but they did not reveal the exact rank, and did not answer the other questions. The MoD claimed that the information on the military mission in Chad is not public and that the other questions are not of public interest. The other ministries all denied that Gáspár Orbán was doing work for them, with the Cabinet Office admitting that, on police orders, members of the prime minister’s family were allowed to enter the Carmelite monastery – Viktor Orbán’s office – and other ministry buildings.

Family diplomacy

Direkt36 and Le Monde started to sweep through the Facebook pages of the Chadian and Nigerien governments after denials from Hungarian government officials, and we were able to identify Gáspár Orbán’s involvement in both the Hungarian military and foreign ministry delegations. The prime minister’s son is in fact the only person to have attended at least all the six meetings related to the preparation of the Hungarian military mission in Africa from May 2023 to January 2024, according to photos and videos. In several places, he could only be identified from the back or profile, by his body type, hairstyle or the way he was dressed, and by the clothes he wore in other photos.

According to photos uploaded to Facebook by the African participants, and according to sources familiar with the details of the visits, in May 2023, Gáspár Orbán visited Niger in the company of Azbej Tristan, the Deputy State Secretary for the Assistance to Persecuted Christians; In early July, he visited Chad with Azbej and László Máthé, the Hungarian Ministerial Commissioner responsible for coordinating Hungarian foreign policy in the sub-Saharan region; in October, he visited Chad again with Máthé; in December, he was again in Chad with foreign minister Péter Szijjártó’s delegation; in January 2024, he visited Niger with Máthé and shortly afterwards again he was in Chad.

A source close to the Chadian authorities also told Le Monde that it was Gáspár Orbán who had established the contacts necessary to facilitate the negotiations through the “family diplomacy” that is common in Africa.

According to the source, the reception of the Hungarian delegation to Chad in early July 2023 was arranged by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s son, who received help from Mohamed Bazoum, the son of the Nigerien president (who was later overthrown in a coup on July 26, 2023). It was Bazoum’s son who put Gáspar Orbán in touch with his good friend Karimo Déby, half-brother of Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Déby. According to the source close to the Chadian authorities, the Hungarians were originally going to send a military mission to Niger, which was thwarted by the coup – they then sought to contact the Chadians with the help of Gáspár Orbán.

Last July, the Hungarian delegation was officially led by state secretary Tristan Azbej and ministerial commissioner László Máthé, who  – together with Gáspár Orbán – were even able to meet President Mahamat Idriss Déby himself. Le Monde has also managed to confirm that French government officials are also aware of the involvement of Viktor Orbán’s son in the preparation of the mission to Chad (Niger and Chad are French-speaking countries where France’s influence is still strong).

On the evening of January 23, Direkt36 received the reply of the foreign ministry, the fourth ministry to be contacted with a public information request, in which they denied having any information on Gáspár Orbán – while the recordings show that he was attending negotiations of Hungarian diplomatic missions. In the meantime, Le Monde, which was involved in the joint investigation, managed to schedule an interview for the next day, January 24, with the foreign ministry officials who had previously been part of the delegation with Gáspár Orbán, Tristan Azbej and László Máthé.

At one point in the otherwise good-spirited interview, which was full of substantive answers, the French journalist showed the foreign ministry leaders photos of Gáspár Orbán posted on African Facebook pages, asking whether Gáspár Orbán was in the photos and in what capacity he was participating in the mission.

Orbán Gáspár can be identified in this picture from Chad – Source: the Facebook page of the Chadian Ministry of Defence

Azbej and Máthé were clearly surprised at the mention of Gáspár Orbán. They did not deny that he was in the footage, but refused to answer further, arguing that information about military personnel is not public and therefore they cannot talk about him. (In all the footage in which we have identified Gáspár Orbán, the Prime Minister’s son is seen in civilian clothes, in smart, fashionable, colourful jacket-trousers-tie-hat combinations, with a short beard and a thick mustache – none of which is indicative of a real military appearance, but which the rules allow.)

The minister intervenes

A day after the foreign ministry officials refused to answer questions on Gáspár Orbán on the grounds of confidentiality of information about military personnel, Minister of Defense Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky unexpectedly revealed in an interview with Index.hu, which has been under government influence since 2020, in response to the last question of an interview, that Gáspár Orbán, “because of his special qualifications, legal knowledge and language skills, is involved in the preparation of the Chad mission, in cooperation with other military and civilian leaders”. The minister also claimed that “I appointed him as liaison officer. This is the army (…) and he is on duty”.

In contrast, shortly before, Szalay-Bobrovniczky’s ministry had stated in its rejection of Direkt36’s public information request that “data related to the military mission in Chad are not public pursuant to Article 15 (3) of Act CXL of 2021 on Defense and the Hungarian Defense Forces”.

We have tried to reach Gáspar Orbán through the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defense, but so far there has been no response. The Ministry of Defense did not explain why they did not tell us that the prime minister’s son was participating in the Chad mission, when Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky spoke publicly about it shortly afterwards.

Cover picture: Photo: Cnarr-Tchad / Facebook ; Illustration: Telex

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12.13.23

The “Sovereignty Protection Authority” is harmful and against the rule of law, yet it cannot intimidate independent media

Direkt36

The newly adopted “Sovereignty Protection” law does not expressly regulate the operation of media companies, it is, however, capable of severely restricting the freedom of the press, potentially making it difficult or even impossible for independent newsrooms, journalists and media companies to operate.

The so-called “Sovereignty Protection Authority” will be an arbitrarily appointed body with unlimited powers, operating without any oversight. This office will have the means to threaten and harass the individuals and organizations it targets, in a way that is nominally lawful but in fact arbitrary. It does not even need sanctions to do so; the damage caused by investigations without limits or legal guarantees may in itself be enough to destroy those in the crosshairs.

This law makes it clear: in Hungary today, anyone who takes part in democratic debate or even simply informs the public is suspect to those in power.

Independent media outlets that obtain and report information in the public interest are repeatedly accused of serving “foreign interests”. This is a deliberate lie, which defames not only the newsrooms that do vital work for democracy, but also those Hungarians who watch, listen to and read their content, and support their operations financially. The operation of independent newsrooms, including their financial background, is public and transparent. There are no hidden funds or subsidies.

The creation of a “Sovereignty Protection Authority” that can collect unlimited data, can interrogate anyone, and can be used against anyone, is contrary to the most basic norms of the rule of law.

It goes against the human rights and democratic principles accepted by Hungary, and against common sense.

However, we, the undersigned independent media organizations, will not change the principles and practices of our operations: we will continue to work transparently, accountably and in accordance with the rules of our profession to ensure that the Hungarian people know what is happening in the country and why. This is our patriotic duty, and no “Authority” will deter us.

Why is the authority established by the act against the rule of law?

  • The authority can open an investigation against any person or organization on the basis of its own decision without giving reasons.
  • According to the text of the law, which uses undefined terms, such an investigation can be launched against anyone who is active in public life in the broadest sense.
  • The organizations and persons under investigation, including all staff, regardless of their job title, are obliged to provide information to the authority.
  • The same applies to anyone else who, although not the subject of the investigation, may be considered by the authority to be involved.
  • The authority may also request information from any public or other body on anyone and anything without restriction.
  • The authority is outside the jurisdiction of any redress forum, including the courts. Persons and organizations under investigation have nowhere to turn if they consider the investigation to be unjustified, conducted in bad faith or its findings to be unfounded.

We are united in our view that the law entitled “On the Protection of National Sovereignty” should not simply be corrected in its details, but entirely rejected.

It does not serve the information security of our society; on the contrary, it is meant to directly undermine it with its threat to free media and democratic debate in general.

 

Tamás Bodoky, atlatszo.hu

Endre Bojtár B., Magyar Narancs

Zsombor György, Magyar Hang

Márton Gulyás, Partizán

Tamás Német, Telex

András Pethő, Direkt36

Péter Uj, 444

Gábor Vajda, Qubit

The newsroom of Válasz Online

Blanka Zöldi, Lakmusz

 

 

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