During the regime change, SZDSZ was the party with the best overseas connections. They used their opportunities partly to smear their opponents and partly to collect campaign funds. Using contemporary documents and writings, they present the scaled-down versions of Karácsony-Márki-Zay's American fund-raising. In the Magyar Nemzet series of articles, it will also be seen that the appearance of foreign financial circles in party financing and then their participation in privatization is a left-liberal model already used in the 90s. Another pillar of foreign influence was the construction of a network of non-governmental organizations operating in Hungary and their continuous funding from the United States.
The issue of the "dollar left" has been preoccupying the public for months. Rumors about this had been spreading until then, but at the end of the summer, Péter Márki-Zay himself admitted that they had received hundreds of millions - in fact, as it turned out later: HUF 1.8 billion - from overseas. The money was collected by a foundation, the founder of which was none other than Dávid Korányi, Gergely Karácsony's chief adviser, an old trusted person of the Soros network. As it was in the podcast of the left-liberal 24.hu : " This overseas relationship […] according to opposition folklore, this was previously under Gergely Karácsony. [...] But since that project collapsed for various reasons [...], this background found its way to Péter Márki-Zay. "
Since the change of regime, it is an unprecedented volume and intensity of foreign election interference, but at the same time, the foreign financing of left-liberal politics is not without precedent. Before the founding of the Együtt party, characterized by the names of Gordon Bajnai and Viktor Szigetvári, who appear regularly in the current case, but already after the fall of the Bajnai government, the two of them politicized in the colors of the Haza és Haladás Alíptavny, which received a significant amount of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Center for American Progress, partly from an American institution supported by György Soros
"We received a grant from an American foundation, but at the same time, this grant can be viewed without any balance on our bank account. US law strictly prohibits the support of political parties by foundations. A foundation that supports a political party will lose its tax benefits," Tibor Vidos, executive secretary of SZDSZ, told MTV News on January 3, 1990. What was not mentioned in the recording is the fact that was presented by . According to this, the SZDSZ was the first of the Hungarian parties to start fundraising in the USA in 1989 (!).
It is worth noting the fact that already then, 33 years ago, a very similar model was developed to support the left-liberals in Hungary. On the same day, November 20, 1989, both Vidos on behalf of the SZDSZ and János Kis, the later first president of the party, on behalf of the European Hungary Foundation close to the party, entrusted The Bancroft Group LP with fundraising. The documents proving this are still available today, and what is particularly interesting is that the SZDSZ had to report the identity of its "agent" to the US Department of Justice, referring to the 1938 law on the registration of foreign agents, the so-called FARA Act:
The full article of Magyar Nemzet can be read here.
Image: MTI
