According to Mayor Gergely Karácsony, it is not certain that everything happened during the campaign financing as Péter Márki-Zay claimed. The former Prime Minister candidate stated to the Hungarian Nation that the last bills of the campaign were paid with the help of the American NGO Action for Democracy. The president of this company is Dávid Korányi, Karácsony's chief adviser, former state secretary of the Bajna government. Despite preliminary expectations, the left-wing backbencher did not appear at the conference held at the CEU Budapest campus.
The campaign financing scandal of the left broke out in early September, when former Prime Minister Péter Márki-Zay spoke in a podcast about the fact that the Everyone's Magyarországa Movement (MMM), which he led, paid the last bills of the campaign with a foreign donation of several hundred million forints.
The donor is the American-based organization Action for Democracy, which is chaired by Gergely Karácsony's chief adviser, Dávid Korányi. By the way, Korányi was the former secretary of state of the Bajnai government and one of the former prime minister's important people.
In a statement, Action for Democracy acknowledged the support provided to MMM, but rejected the accusations that they had interfered in the election campaign. According to Action for Democracy, they provided the support in order to protect democratic values, increase electoral participation and promote the integrity of voting.
However, since then it has been proven that the support was not used that way, as Péter Márki-Zay openly stated. The former Prime Minister candidate spoke about the fact that they received money for cultural projects, but the money was also used to support a number of campaign products mentioned among them, such as the so-called "migrant counter" and the age reduction of representative candidates.
In fact, the failed Prime Minister aspirant added that they would not have done such a "cultural campaign" if there had not been parliamentary elections.
In order to clarify the issue, the Magyar Nemzet visited a conference held on September 21 and 22, where Dávid Korányi was among the speakers. The event was titled Budapest Forum 2022, the event was hosted by the Central European University (CEU), financed by György Soros, and the political capital marked by the name of Péter Krekó and the Budapest municipality were listed as organizers.
It was only revealed on the spot that Dávid Korányi will only register for the event online, at least that's how the organizers informed the staff member of the newspaper on Wednesday.
At the conference, Miklós Hajnal appeared in the audience, and in response to our question regarding the campaign financing case, he said: different rules apply to associations.
By the way, Hajnal only knew about the case as much as he read about it in the press, while he himself actively campaigned.
Former Foreign Minister Péter Balázs had not even heard of the scandal, while Gergely Karácsony responded to a journalist's question about the hundreds of millions arriving from abroad by saying that it is not certain that everything is as the press claims. But he did not wish to elaborate on his position.
Source: magyarnemzet.hu
Opening image: Péter Márki-Zay and Gergely Karácsony (Photo: István Mirkó)
