Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony “got clearly involved in money laundering in 2021”, the group leader of ruling Fidesz said on public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió on Sunday.
Máté Kocsis cited a recent national security report on foreign funding to Hungary’s opposition in the campaign for last year’s general election, and insisted that Karácsony “shrouded donations of over 500 million forints (EUR 1.3bn) for his campaign for prime minister in sad and reckless lies”. He said it was yet to be established why those donations “collected in closed boxes” had been “made almost exclusively in British pounds and euros”, MTI wrote.
Karácsony is “in great trouble”, Kocsis said, adding that in a recently launched investigation “he will have to provide more serious answers”, and suggested that under current campaign financing regulations the opposition parties “could be fined as much as twice the several billion forints they had received for their 2022 election campaign”.
Kocsis insisted that the leftist parties had abandoned the political consensus around campaign financing and “made an alliance with foreign billionaires to go around the rules”. All political parties had been in agreement that they would not use foreign moneys for their campaigns, since “foreign financiers buying themselves positions in the Hungarian government would jeopardise Hungary’s sovereignty”, he said.
“The Left has trampled on written and non-written rules which will necessitate making the law even more stringent,” Kocsis said, adding that a draft could be submitted before parliament’s autumn session.
We wrote HERE about a government-Budapest dispute which could result in Budapest passes becoming invalid on trains, buses inside the city.
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6 Comments
A globalist-socialist stooge got financed by the globalist-socialist cabal. No way! Say it ain’t so!
I do not know what to believe, in 85% of things I do not believe in what this government says about any thing. unless raising taxes and creating more mess which the people will pay for through their taxes after all we already pay for the fake news in the local media.. What a mess it all is.. Wake up Hungary and just vote for the other side it can’t be worse than this shower of, stealing by the rule of law, humans…
Somehow Johnny dept get a bigger headline
There was never any inter-party consensus on campaign financing. Fidesz has dictated the rules and has made it harder for the opposition to get state funding while Fidesz has continually used state resources for what amounts to party campaigning non-stop between elections. It is impossible for the opposition to even put up a billboard anywhere. They are all Fidesz controlled. When the opposition tried in desperation to put ads on telephone poles Fidesz promptly passed a law making it illegal. The company that ran a business putting up these ads then went insolvent and was bought out by a Fidesz controlled company. After the election Fidesz then reversed the law allowing Fidesz ads to go up on telephone poles. Beware smear campaigns put out by Fidesz which has been their modus operandi for years.
Adding to “Anonymous’ “comment: Did someone say that our last elections were FAIR and equitable?!
As it stands, NO opposition is going to be able to win an election without some external funds.
Who said our country was democratic! Electoral Autocracy is absolutely right.
The laws on ads on telephone poles goes back to the 2014 election campaign. “Commercial media were banned from profiting from political advertising….not a single TV or radio station gave broadcasting time to the competing parties. Meanwhile, (Fidesz) government spent many millions of forints on televised “public interest’ information campaigns, which did not count as political campaigning. In these ads, the government used the slogan “Hungary is performing better” which was the same as the one on Fidesz’ campaign posters.” The opposition took Fidesz to court and won but Fidesz just ignored the ruling and continued its’ ads.
From: Tainted Democracy p.131- Zsuzsanna Szelenyi