Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government accused prominent journalist Szabolcs Panyi of being a spy.
“Panyi Szabolcs … spied against his own country in cooperation with a foreign state,” Minister of Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás said Thursday at a press briefing.
Hungary is set to hold parliamentary elections on April 12, with Orbán’s Fidesz polling behind Péter Magyar’s opposition Tisza party. Previously, Orbán accused EU institutions of interfering financially in the Hungarian election campaign to prevent him from being reelected.
The official complaint alleges the reporter engaged with foreign intelligence services and shared sensitive information about Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó. The country’s Justice Minister Bence Tuzson said his government described this as “an extraordinary situation” and a “serious criminal offense.” According to the minister’s statement, the allegations are based on “publicly known information.”
Panyi had previously published a transcript of a 2020 conversation between Szijjártó and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov discussing elections in Slovakia.
But Panyi denied accusations of wrongdoing and slammed the Hungarian government for acting like “an ally of the Kremlin” in a Facebook post. “Accusing investigative journalists of espionage is virtually unprecedented in the 21st century for a European Union member state,” he said.
“At no point in this process did I engage in espionage. Nor did I cooperate with any foreign intelligence service in wiretapping or surveilling Péter Szijjártó,” Panyi continued.
Panyi explained he had tried to find out whether Szijjártó used another phone to communicate with Russian officials that was not disclosed to his own ministry. Szijjártó admitted that he spoke to Russia before and after EU meetings, following a Washington Post report that claimed he had maintained close ties with the Kremlin throughout the war in Ukraine.
Szijjártó and Gulyás, both members of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, have publicly accused the pro-European Tisza party and Ukraine of being involved. “[What’s] serious is that this Hungarian journalist, who maintains active ties with foreign services, belongs to the innermost circles of the Tisza Party, ” Szijjártó said in a Facebook video.
Later Thursday, Gulyás linked the probe to another espionage case with two more alleged spies involved, both of whom “were trained abroad, maintained contacts, and moved in and out of the Ukrainian embassy.”
Gulyás’ office did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment on whether investigating journalists critical of their government could harm press freedom in Hungary.
Antoaneta Roussi contributed to this report.
