Have Hungarian political parties been financed from abroad?

The US-based Action for Democracy civil organisation transferred 1.8 billion forints (EUR 4.4m) worth of funding to the Everyone’s Hungary Movement (MMM) and an additional 1.15 billion to three Hungarian companies last spring and summer, Brigadier General Zoltán András Kovács, the director general of the National Information Centre (NIK), said in a written response to Zoltán Sas, the head of parliament’s national security committee.

Sas, a lawmaker for opposition Jobbik, announced earlier on Wednesday that he had initiated at the committee’s meeting on Nov. 17 the publishing of a report compiled by the Hungarian secret services on foreign funding for political organisations. He said that the information received had been posted on the national security committee’s website.

In his letter, the NIK director said that because investigations were still ongoing by the national tax and customs authority on suspicion of financial fraud and by the national investigation bureau of Hungarian police on suspicion of embezzlement and money laundering, only parts of the material in the report had been declassified. He said NIK would carry out an analysis and evaluation of information and compile a summary. NIK is also analysing how the Hungarian recipients spent the money they had received from abroad.