All posts by Panyi Szabolcs

How Viktor Orbán angered his closest friends in Europe

A box of excrement was sent to the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw, president Katalin Novák was lectured by the Polish prime minister, and Viktor Orbán’s European ambitions were jeopardized. Direkt36, in cooperation with Vsquare, have uncovered the behind the scenes story of the Hungarian-Polish alliance, which previously seemed unbreakable, since the outbreak of the war.

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Bracing for US sanctions, Russian financier in Budapest was busy securing personal offshore assets, leaked documents reveal

Russians demand their money in Hungary’s controversial golden visa scheme

“We need to pressure” the Hungarians – Leaked documents reveal collapse of Russian-led bank in Budapest

Russian spy chief’s son has a Budapest home address. In the company property of an old friend of Orbán’s chief of staff

Official document shows that Andrey Naryshkin, who acquired residency permit in the Hungarian golden visa scheme, had his registered home address in a property owned by pro-government businessman Shabtai Michaeli’s company just a few months ago. According to the government, Naryshkin’s residency permit was revoked by the counterintelligence service two years ago, but the case was stalled in court.

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Inside Viktor Orbán’s Response to the War in Ukraine

A 10 legfontosabb részlet az Orbán háborús döntéseiről szóló tényfeltáró cikkből 

The inside story of how Pegasus was brought to Hungary

Direkt36 has revealed that the cyber weapon was purchased by the Hungarian state through a broker company that later became partly owned by Minister of Interior Sándor Pintér’s close confidant, László Tasnádi, who once worked for the Communist state security apparatus. The company also involved a businessman who had previous ties to the current left-wing opposition. Pegasus was considered such an expensive and top-class weapon by the intelligence agencies that it was kept secret even in internal circles.

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Western allies puzzled by Hungary’s mild reaction to Russian hacking

Cables show how Orbán’s diplomats gather information on journalists

Inside the opposition’s crushing defeat against Viktor Orbán

The attorney became a Pegasus target when one of Hungary’s most notorious murder cases took a turn

Putin’s hackers gained full access to Hungary’s foreign ministry networks, the Orbán government has been unable to stop them

Russian state actors hacked into the Hungarian Foreign Ministry’s computer network compromising internal correspondence and even a secure network that transmits classified information. The recurring cyberattacks over the past decade were kept quiet by the Orbán government, and have not been successfully countered. With the help of internal documents and background interviews, Direkt36 exposes Russian cyber espionage against Hungary’s MFA.

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Former Hungarian ambassador to China was targeted with Pegasus – shortly before becoming senior advisor to Orbán

Spies, business deals and criminals. How Orbán favors Russian interests instead of Western ones

In the past 12 years, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government has gotten into a situation many times, when they had to decide between the interests of Western allies, or Russia. Direkt36 has revealed many cases, where, in the end, the government favored Vladimir Putin and his circles. It occurred, for example, that they drove a Hungarian company out of business, just to be able to make space for a Russian firm.

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Orbánék leszerződtették a Pegasus kémszoftver gyártójának korábbi lobbistáját

Így ellenőrizheted, megfigyelték-e az iPhone-odat a Pegasus kémszoftverrel

Hungarian president’s closest bodyguards targeted with Pegasus spyware

Targeting the president’s bodyguards may have been related to the internal struggle within the security agencies, which intensified after the Counter Terrorism Center wanted to find out the details of President János Áder’s schedules, a Direkt36 investigation has found. Even the smallest details of Áder’s activity could be monitored through the surveillance of his bodyguards with Pegasus.

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A biztonsági szervek rászálltak a pilótára, aki a fideszes elit repülőútjait figyelte. Aztán feltűnt a Pegasus-célpontok között is

A Gyurcsány-kormány két nemzetbiztonsági vezetőjét is célba vették a Pegasusszal