Szabolcs Panyi

In the 2010s, Hungarian intelligence began spying in Brussels against the EU and tried to recruit Hungarians working in EU institutions for this purpose. However, Hungarian intelligence carried it out so blatantly and clumsily that they were exposed, and their network collapsed — as uncovered by Direkt36 in cooperation with Belgian and German partners. A 2010-es években a magyar hírszerzés elkezdett kémkedni Brüsszelben az EU ellen, és ehhez uniós intézményeknél dolgozó magyarokat próbált beszer

Georg Spöttle, a regular presence in pro-Orbán media, has come under scrutiny after one of his close acquaintances failed a background check—triggered by concerns over Spöttle’s Russian connections. Information obtained by Direkt36 reveals that Spöttle had a close relationship with an officer from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. A kormányközeli médiában gyakran szereplő Georg Spöttlének egyik közeli ismerőse akadt fenn egy átvilágításon a propagandista orosz kapcsolatai miatt. A

After a Budapest meeting between Viktor Orbán, Aleksandar Vučić, and Milorad Dodik, Orbán’s chief bodyguard was tasked with deploying a large contingent of counter-terrorism police to Banja Luka in case they needed to help Dodik escape arrest by a Bosnian court, a VSquare investigation has found.

No Hungarian media outlet, journalist, or individual was named in the intelligence report, which Orbán’s propaganda machine used to falsely accuse Direkt36 and other independent media of being paid and participating in a Ukrainian intelligence campaign aimed at "smearing" Viktor Orbán.

Direkt36 has revealed that during János Lázár's administration, the Information Office was monitoring OLAF staff investigating suspicious projects linked to the son-in-law of Viktor Orbán. They tried to find these documents when people from other services invaded the office's headquarters in the summer of 2018.

Former Orlen CEO Daniel Obajtek claims he’s not hiding abroad. However, many of his videos on social media were shot in a Budapest penthouse apartment owned by a company close to Viktor Orbán’s government. During the time we were watching the house,…

Back in 2020, Slovakia’s then-Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini asked Viktor Orbán to act as a middleman between him and the Kremlin. He aimed for an invitation to Moscow just before Slovakia’s parliamentary election – hoping that it would appeal to…

At one point in his 2024 State of the Nation address, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that “we cannot interfere in other countries’ elections, but we would very much like to see President Donald Trump return to the White House.” The Hungarian…

Direkt36 and Telex have learned from several independent sources that head of the Hungarian Reformed Church Zoltán Balog, who has long been a confidant of Hungarian president Katalin Novák, played a crucial role in the presidential pardon which led…

The son of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has tried to hide his involvement in the planned Hungarian military mission in Chad in an almost comical way. The government was also secretive, but when they discovered that Direkt36 and the French…

Specialized equipment for signals intelligence (SIGINT) has been mounted on the roof of the Russian diplomats’ building in Warsaw. From Warsaw to Budapest, Stockholm, or Brussels – we found similar equipment on the rooftops of Russian facilities…

Source: Karl-Erik Leik and Mart Nigola / Delfi Estonia We have obtained a document that shows how Russia plans to take control of Belarus. The strategy, written for Vladimir Putin’s administration, envisions In the fall of 2021, while the Kremlin’s…

Viktor Orbán was preparing for an important meeting that would attract international attention, but things did not go according to plan. The Hungarian prime minister traveled to Moscow at the end of January, under the shadow of the threat of war, to…

Russian state actors hacked into the Hungarian Foreign Ministry’s computer network compromising internal correspondence and even a secure network that transmits classified information. The recurring cyberattacks over the past decade were kept quiet…

Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus, a powerful Israeli cyberweapon An international investigation has found that Pegasus has been abused by countries around the world. Hungarian targets include media company owner…

Those who tuned in to Klasszik Radio, a Budapest area classical music station, encountered something weird on June 24, 2011. The broadcast was suddenly interrupted, and regular European classical music was replaced by a Chinese-themed music-and-talk…

In October 2017, important figures of German and international business and political life gathered at a reception in a glass-walled hall on one of the upper floors of Frankfurt’s tallest skyscraper. At the event, one of the top executives of a…

Benjamin Netanyahu was smoking one cigar after another while self-confidently explaining to Viktor Orban how he would return to power and make peace with the Palestinians. Orban met him in a private room of Jerusalem’s iconic building, the King David…

In a warehouse located outside of Budapest, two Russian arms dealers guided around their prospective buyers, Mexican drug cartel men, for the last time. The weapons that were presented mostly came from the Hungarian Defense Forces and the intention…

The head of Budapest’s public transport was in the way of a Russian metro company’s business, with more than 200 million euros at stake. A KGB-style provokatsiya was utilized to get him fired and force the Hungarian capital to buy malfunctioning and…