In February 2023, István Kovács, head of Megafon, an organization that ran social media campaigns favoring Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, sent a grateful email to a Hungarian company. “On behalf of the entire Megafon team, I would like to once again thank you for your previous support,” Kovács wrote, adding that they were pleased that the company had expressed its intention to provide further support.

The recipient was the CEO of V-Híd Zrt., one of the companies owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, who amassed a fabulous fortune thanks to government contracts during Viktor Orbán’s 16-year-long rule that ended in the April parliamentary elections.

The company didn’t hesitate for long before providing further support to Megafon. A week later, the company’s deputy CEO for strategy issued the order: “Please transfer the 500 million to Megafon now!” The 500 million forint, valued around 1.3 million euros in today’s exchange rate, was sent by the finance department the very same day, as confirmed by a transfer receipt. A few months later, the company transferred another substantial donation, around 1 million euros, to the campaign organization supporting Fidesz.

According to internal documents obtained by Direkt36, large amounts of funds were routinely transferred to Megafon Digital Incubator Center from Mészáros’ companies. The documents we obtained reveal that since 2022, V-Híd Zrt., R-Kord Kft., and Kontúr Csoport Kft. have provided at least 4.5 billion forints (around 12,2 million euros) in support to the organization, which acted as a mouthpiece for Viktor Orbán’s party. This amount was one-third of Megafon’s revenue during this period.

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These documents were part of internal records obtained by Direkt36 that contain previously undisclosed details about the operations of V-Híd Zrt. We will soon publish additional articles based on these documents, covering the Mészáros company’s extravagant spendings and its dealings linked to the Orbán family.

“It’s a vicious cycle. Mészáros’s company wins the public procurement contract and gets rich as a result. He uses that money to fund a private company that works to keep Fidesz in power by spreading propaganda,”

said József Péter Martin, executive director of Transparency International Hungary, in response to Direkt36 regarding V-Híd’s funding of Megafon.

In a 2014 interview, Lőrinc Mészáros spoke about how his longtime friendship with Viktor Orbán played a role in him getting wealthy. “God, luck, and Viktor Orbán certainly played a role in to get me to where I am today, but I never privatized anything, I never stole anything—I earned everything through my work and my wits,” he told Heti Válasz.

Representatives from V-Híd and Megafon did not respond to our inquiry.

Supporting Megafon with Billions

Documents obtained by Direkt36 reveal that Lőrinc Mészáros’s companies have been providing the organization with annual funding in hundreds of millions or even billions of forints since at least 2022 (in the rest of the article we converted the forint amounts to euro, using the current rate, so that it is easier to follow).

According to the documents—including a donation agreement and other internal records—V-Híd Zrt. contributed 843 000 euros to Megafon’s operations in 2022. Among the documents we obtained is a spreadsheet listing the 2022 expenditures of Kontúr Csoport Kft., another company affiliated with Mészáros, which reveals that this firm provided 272 000 euros in funding to Megafon in March, just a few weeks before the April 2022 parliamentary elections.

Excerpt from one of the donation agreements

In 2023, in addition to the large-scale contributions from V-Híd, another of Mészáros’s companies, R-Kord Kft., also signed a donation agreement in which it allocated 590 000 euros to Megafon. R-Kord gave the money even though in the same year the company was unable to pay its subcontractors for their work on a government-commissioned railway development project. According to Szabad Európa, this put several small business owners in financial trouble; some had to take out loans, while others were forced to lay off employees because they could not access their funds.

In January 2024, István Sárváry, CEO of V-Híd, presented a proposal to the company’s supervisory board regarding various planned subsidies. The document stated that the company planned to provide Megafon with 1.3 million euros per month from January through March—for a total of approximately 4 million euros. The supervisory board, of which Lőrinc Mészáros Jr. is a member, most likely approved these subsidies. Other documents that have come into our possession—donation agreements and receipts—indicate that these large donations were actually paid out to Megafon.

However, V-Híd donated even more to the organization that year. An internal email from 2025 listed a total of 8.1 million euros in funding provided to Megafon in 2024. In addition to the email, other documents also indicate that these payments were made.

The construction company also provided separate funding to one of Megafon’s most well-known members, Dávid Filep.

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According to emails and accounting documents, Aktuális Média Kft., a company owned by Filep received around 600 000 euros in 2022. The documents indicate that Filep’s firm received this money in February, before the parliamentary elections. Filep’s company also aimed to promote government propaganda and discredit the opposition.

According to Telex, Aktuális Média Kft.—which has since been dissolved—spent nearly 452 000 euros on advertising its videos between 2021 and 2022.

Filep did not respond to our questions, stating that his company “acted as a private-sector entity, and the details of its internal business processes and partnerships are not subject to public disclosure.”

The way of public funds

Megafon was launched in 2020 with the purpose of boosting Fidesz’s propaganda messages on social media with the help of individuals who present themselves online as right-wing influencers. Megafon’s founder and CEO is István Kovács who is the strategic director of a think-tank, which also received indirectly support from the Orbán’s Cabinet Office, then led by Antal Rogán who was in charge of government communications.

The company’s revenues grew year after year, as did its expenses. By 2025, it employed 57 people, and the organization’s most recognizable faces became Philip Rákay, Dániel Bohár, Dániel Deák, Kristóf Trombitás, Stefi Déri, and Dávid Filep.

Megafon quickly became the number one political and public affairs advertiser on the Hungarian-language Facebook. According to Telex’s article, by the end of the 2022 election campaign, their total advertising spending had already exceeded one billion forints (2.7 million euros), and in the first half of 2024, their advertising costs surpassed two billion forints (5.4 million euros).

Megafon has never disclosed exactly where its revenue comes from.

“I approached a few conservative businessmen and asked them to support our cause,”

Megafon director István Kovács stated in an interview with Mandiner. He added that “of course, if that person happens to be Lőrinc Mészáros, we’ll gratefully accept his support,” but he did not officially confirm that Mészáros was backing them. He emphasized that “there is no public money in Megafon, and there never will be.”

However, public funds did reach Megafon indirectly.  V-Híd Zrt., which has won several government contracts—such as the modernization of railway infrastructure, highway expansion, and the Budapest-Belgrade railway project costing 2.1 billion euros—receives funding from EU and Hungarian public funds to carry out these projects. Among the projects listed on their website, there is not a single commercial project beyond its government contracts.

In conclusion, the company, which operates on public funds, distributed billions of its revenue to an organization that promoted Fidesz and spread its propaganda messages.

V-Híd has previously donated money to organizations close to Fidesz.

This April, 444 reported that the construction company had also provided 4.9 million euros in support to a foundation, which organizes the “Digital Civic Circles” intended to promote Fidesz online. In 2023, K-monitor revealed that V-Híd had donated 93 000 euros to Fidelitas, Fidesz’s youth organization.

In 2024, the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) of Hungary also investigated whether Megafon’s activities might involve prohibited campaign financing, but according to Telex’s article, the office did not find any irregularities at that time. According to László Windisch, head of ÁSZ, they found no evidence of institutional cooperation, a joint prime ministerial candidate, shared campaign materials, jointly funded events, or party support. Windisch said that they had contacted Megafon and requested a statement as to whether there had been any organized cooperation with Fidesz during the campaign. The response was that there had not been.

However, the fall of the Orbán government also brought about the end of Megafon.

Magyar Hang was the first to report that, following Fidesz’s defeat, a downsizing process had begun at the company. According to an article by Media1, on election night there was still talk of Megafon continuing its operations, and on a later meeting the possibility of switching to crowdfunding was raised. On April 21, they announced that if a solution was not found within a month, mass layoffs might follow.

Megafon’s website became inaccessible by August.

Dániel Deák, one of Megafon’s well-known faces, responded to a question from Telex at this year’s Tusványos festival regarding Megafon’s closure, saying that, in his opinion, “it was already inevitable.” He also noted that “thanks to political ads, their content reached a great many people.” He said that after the election, it is no longer necessary to “amplify right-wing voices through a political action group,” but rather on an individual basis.

Telex also asked Deák about funding. “We still have our supporters,” he said, but added that, thanks to his fortunate family situation, he doesn’t actually need funding for his work.

Illustration: Péter Somogyi (szarvas) / Telex

Pierre Romera Zhang, member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, assisted with the technical processing of the documents cited in this article via the Datashare platform.

We used the Opten service to access Hungarian company data.