HUNGARIAN MEP ACCUSED OF SPYING FOR RUSSIA

[dlwickham]

https://vsquare.org/the-great-escape-of-kgb/

Stunned and shocked would be an understatement if we wanted to describe how quite a few seasoned counter-intelligence officers at Hungary’s Constitutional Protection Office (AH) could have felt in April 2014. Going against their professional convictions, AH terminated an ongoing investigation and subsequently initiated a criminal case against a lesser-known far-right politician. The accusation was severe: spying against institutions of the European Union on behalf of a third country. Security officers of AH were embarrassed, not because they weren’t fully convinced that Béla Kovács, a notoriously russophile Hungarian member of the European Parliament – dubbed as KGBéla even by his own far-right comrades – broke the law and made illegal contacts with Russian intelligence officers, but because they wanted to make sure he could not escape justice and his web of contacts would be fully discovered.

As politics interfered with the investigation, the security officers of AH knew their work was still incomplete.

The story of Béla Kovács is the most accurate depiction of the complicated nature of Russian influence in Hungary. In order to understand what happened to him, and why, we need to take a brief look at today’s political landscape of Hungary first.