The Tisza Party, the opposition force now leading in the polls ahead of the elections scheduled for April 12, was going through rough days when party chairman Péter Magyar held a press conference on November 18, 2024. He was visibly irritated, as new clips of conversations secretly recorded by his ex-girlfriend, Evelin Vogel, had just been posted online.

Magyar, with barely concealed anger, lashed out at the independent press for giving space to “manipulated, edited,” “obtained through criminal activity,” and “secretly recorded private conversations.” Referring to Antal Rogán, the minister responsible for the secret services, he called the continuous release of the recordings made by Vogel the “Tónika Show”.

He also mentioned that someone had hacked into his account on Signal, an app designed for encrypted communication, and that undercover agents might be monitoring them; he referred to the current situation as the “Hungarian Watergate.” At the press conference, he also presented a black pen, which he said was a spy tool for secret survaillance.

According to Magyar, one of their colleagues responsible for IT security began searching their offices using amateur equipment, and he discovered the device in one of the conference rooms, in an internet cable duct running along the floor. There was no memory card inside, so he surmised that it was a device controlled via Wi-Fi. According to Magyar, it was not a professional spy pen, but rather an amateur device that could even be purchased online.

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The matter died down after the press conference, and Magyar did not speak about it publicly afterward.

However, there are several indications that the spy pen may have been part of the covert operation against the party, the details of which we reported in our article published last week and in our interview with former police detective Bence Szabó. As part of the operation, a person calling himself ‘Henry’ attempted to recruit one of the party’s former IT specialists, who appeared in our earlier articles under his online alias, Gundalf, but who, since his interview with 444, has also become known to a wider audience by his real name, Dániel Hrabóczki.

We were able to reconstruct the operation aimed at compromising Tisza from the messages exchanged between Henry and Hrabóczki that came into Direkt36’s possession. The messages also reveal new, previously unknown details about the spy pen.

The documents suggest that it was Hrabóczki who found the device in the party’s office, meaning he may have been the IT security staff member Magyar referred to at his press conference. On the other hand, the exchange of messages reveals that Henry basically took responsibility for the operation and claimed that his team had planted the spy pen at the party headquarters. If the device was indeed hid in the party office by people connected to Henry, that means they were able to arrange for someone to gain access to the premises and operate there unnoticed.

Henry brought up subject of the spy pen on the night of March 31, 2025. First, he stated that “it’s not as easy to get things into the office now as it was in the fall,” then he asked: “That reminds me: do you still have the spy pen, or did it end up staying with Péter?” He added that it would be important to retrieve it, and Hrabóczki would receive a generous reward if he could make that happen.

When the young computer scientist mentioned that he was familiar with the matter but didn’t have the device on him, Henry boasted to him about how complex the device was and claimed that the operation was linked to his team: “You know, we usually try to achieve multiple objectives with a single operation. This thing, for example, ended up there after Péter started over-mystifying the wiretapping story”.

“It worked out perfectly that you were the one going to check out the office,” he continued. “We were curious to see how thorough you were. Of course, we also secretly hoped that Péter would present it as ‘Tóni’s super weapon’” — he added this with a laughing emoji, possibly referring to Antal Rogán, the minister responsible for the Hungarian secret services. Then Henry went on to brag. “No wonder you couldn’t get it to work. Of course, we put a self-destruct mechanism in it to confuse the management even more,” he wrote, presumably referring to the Tisza management. According to him, “it was quite a pain in the ass to put that little thing together.”

Hrabóczki responded with words of appreciation, noting that it was a nice job. “We looked at this model too, and compared to other spy pens, it’s pretty slim-fit,” he said. According to Henry, it had to be thrown together “damn fast,” and “the bosses” insisted that it absolutely had to be a pen, “so the task was pretty tough.” “Well, but this just goes to show that we’re on the professional, winning side, right, Gundalf?” he added.

Hrabóczki wrote to Henry that when they found the spy pen, there was no SD card inside, so even if it had recorded any data, it was no longer there when they found it. Henry replied, “Well, of course there wasn’t one. This model broadcasts live perfectly. That’s exactly why we chose it.”

We sent the Tisza Party several questions regarding the spy pen and the involvement of an unknown individual named Henry, but they declined to comment. We also received no response from Dániel Hrabóczki.

The spy pen didn’t come up in later exchanges, but as we revealed in our March 24 article based on documents and conversations with multiple sources, the operation to recruit Hrabóczki and bring down Tisza continued for months.

Henry and his team wanted to gain control over Tisza’s IT infrastructure so that, at the right moment, before the April 2026 elections, they could paralyze the party’s systems and bring down Tisza. Henry himself revealed this to Hrabóczki, who pretended to cooperate but took screenshots of the messages and showed them to the IT specialist responsible for Tisza’s cyber defense, known by the nickname Buddha.

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When the two computer scientists decided to expose Henry and created a leather belt equipped with a tiny camera for that purpose, the National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) conducted searches of both their homes. The police arrived based on an anonymous tip and seized all data storage devices, searching for child pornography.

The police found no trace of such material on Hrabóczki and Buddha’s devices, but they did come across screenshots of their message exchanges with Henry. One of the intelligence agencies, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (AH), continuously interfered in the investigation, pushing for the two IT specialists to be charged, while ensuring that investigators could not determine Henry’s identity.

On the day our article was published, a search was conducted at the home of one of the NNI’s detectives, Captain Bence Szabó, and he was charged with abuse of office. We subsequently released our previously recorded video interview with the captain.

The story and Szabó’s stance caused a huge stir in Hungarian public discourse; the video has already garnered more than 2.6 million views.

Photo: János Bődey / Telex