Two years ago, a Portuguese businessman with good Hungarian government connections bought the Euronews TV channel. Direkt36, together with Le Monde and Expresso, found out that a large part of the money was provided by a Hungarian state capital fund and a long-standing player in the government propaganda machine. According to leaked internal documents, the investment also had political aims.

(Magyar) A nemrég elfogadott szuverenitásvédelmi törvényre hivatkozva indult propagandisztikus támadás az Átlátszó ellen épp a sajtószabadság ünnepéhez közeledve.

Although encouraging prostitution is a criminal offence In Hungary, the authorities say there is nothing wrong with openly advertising foreign sex work to Hungarian women. Direkt36 looked behind the sex work advertisements as part of an international investigative project.

The son of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has tried to hide his involvement in the planned Hungarian military mission in Chad in an almost comical way. The government was also secretive, but when they discovered that Direkt36 and the French newspaper Le Monde had obtained evidence of Gáspár Orbán’s involvement in the Chad military project, they were quick to make it public. Here is the story of the revelation.

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. It is meant to directly undermine democratic debate in general, and should be entirely rejected.

Hungary launched a major military development program seven years ago. The prime minister has used it to strengthen his international relationships and also realised the usefulness of the military in domestic politics.

We have explored the business successes of Péter Szijjártó’s old colleague and teammate, and how hundreds of millions of forints of public money from the Foreign Ministry contributed to them.

Direkt36 has been part of the “Shadow Diplomats” project, an investigation into the murky world of honorary consuls, led by ICIJ and ProPublica. We found that Hungary is represented by honorary consuls who are accused of crimes such as financing terrorism.

For some time now, all government proposals land on PM Orbán’s desk with green, yellow, or red post-its. People with inside knowledge about the election strategy of Fidesz described the ruling party’s campaign strategy for the 2022 parliamentary elections and its conscious use of social media.

Information technology businessman Gábor Szentgyörgyi has had close relations to Viktor Orbán’s family for a long time now. It started with a connection to Győző Orbán junior, the prime minister’s brother, through wrestling, then he showed up in the company of the prime minister and his father, Győző Orbán senior in a football stadium, and […]