Hungarian police have launched an investigation into allegations that millions of dollars in foreign aid were funneled to the Everyone’s Hungary Movement (Mindenki Magyarországa Mozgalom or MMM), which is a political organization aligned with the left-wing opposition. The National Investigation Agency (NNI) is now investigating suspicion of embezzlement and money laundering.
The investigation is currently being pursued by the Emergency Police National Investigation Bureau, and was initiated after Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition’s former candidate for prime minister, admitted during a podcast interview that MMM had received €4.4 million in funding from the Action for Democracy NGO, going so far as to thank individual board members from the NGO for their advice and financial support during Hungary’s domestic elections.
The federal law enforcement unit is investigating claims of money laundering and embezzlement, according to Hungarian news outlet Magyar Nemzet.
[pp id=49620]
The revelation that a major U.S. NGO with links to figures from the Democratic Party, such as Hillary Clinton, is raising claims that the U.S. actively intervened in Hungary’s election. In the past, President Joe Biden has made baseless claims that Hungary is an “authoritarian regime” while billionaire George Soros has called for “regime change” in Hungary, underlining just how important these left-wing actors viewed Hungary’s national elections in April.
During his podcast interview, Márki-Zay also revealed that the American NGO, Action for Democracy, sent millions of dollars in one batch, but claimed that other transfers had previously come from this organization and that the funds were pooled by many donors from overseas. The NGO denies it funded the election, but in the same statement, claims it “disbursed” funds from foreign donors in the U.S.
In a video interview previously published by Magyar Nemzet, Márki-Zay already explained that the rules of party financing do not apply to them since MMM is not a party and has never “behaved” as a party. That is why, according to him, they can accept money from abroad; he also denied that the money coming from the United States was spent on the election campaign during the election period.
“What we carried out, including with the support of Action for Democracy, was a campaign to change Hungarian culture,” said Márki-Zay. The politician also confirmed that money from the amounts in question also flowed to the Datadat group of companies bearing the name of former Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai.
Incidentally, the police also launched an investigation in connection with Datadat’s “peculiar” data management case that erupted during the election campaign.
A police investigation may now be the only possibility to clear up whether there was any wrongdoing or election laws broken.
The Action for Democracy NGO features key players in left-liberal politics from the United States, Great Britain, and other Western nations, many of them with deep ties to the Democratic Party, including former Gen. Wesley Clark.
The NGO describes itself as “a global organization of concerned citizens who want to empower those who fight for freedom and democracy.” Hungarian news outlet 444.hu, which is known as a left-leaning media outlet, wrote that the “organization is preparing for a series of global campaigns to mobilize the progressive-liberal camp against the illiberal regimes in power.”
Action for Democracy’s website identifies five key “battleground states” — Italy, Brazil, Hungary, Poland and Turkey — which it describes as nations “where we think that democracy is most threatened.” That means the NGO may also be pumping millions in funding into upcoming elections in Brazil, Italy, and Poland in an attempt to sway the outcome of the vote.
The U.S. has long interfered in elections overseas, both against the right and left, depending on the geopolitical objectives of the U.S. at the time. In 2018, former CIA director James Woolsey admitted that the CIA interfered in foreign elections in the past, including in Greece and Italy, which he said was justified to stop communism.
When pressed by Laura Ingraham about whether the U.S. continues to interfere in elections today, Woolsey laughed and said, “Only for a very good cause and in the interest of democracy.”
