Economy 12 March 2025, 1:07pm

Another Hungarian link found in Spanish case of illegal party funding

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Spain's anti-corruption prosecutor has opened an investigation alleged illegal funding of the far-right Vox party, following a complaint filed by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in December. According to the accusation, the party, led by Santiago Abascal, received more than €4.5 million from Hungary's MBH Bank, owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, the country's richest person and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's childhood friend. This would imply a breach of Spanish legislation on the financing of political parties, Euronews reported.

In September 2024, Vox admitted to receiving €9.2 million from Hungarian Bank Holding (MBH Bank), owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, who was a gas fitter in Orbán's hometown of Felcsút and has become Hungary's richest person.

The funds were to be used for the party's 2023 parliamentary and municipal election campaign, when Vox justified the borrowing from a Hungarian bank on the grounds that they were not able to secure a loan from a Spanish institution.

Spain's Vox is a member of the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament, which was set up by Viktor Orbán. The party's leader, Santiago Abascal, is also the President of the EP party group, while its Vice-President is Kinga Gál of Orbán's Fidesz party.

According to Spanish media reports, these funds could have influenced the development of the far-right in recent years.

In addition to international funding, the anti-corruption process is also investigating alleged irregular funding through the placement of 'donation boxes' on the information tables that Vox sets up in the streets. According to the PSOE's complaint, these practices could have been used since 2020 to collect cash in an opaque manner.

Furthermore, it is suspected that the party's revenues from merchandising, products sold to supporters, have increased their financial resources without transparency controls.

Vox strongly denied the accusations. According to the party's Congress spokesman, Pepa Millán, the PSOE is trying to divert attention from its own corruption cases. He stressed that the party had shared all the necessary information with the Court of Auditors.

Last summer, the Court of Auditors sanctioned Vox for very serious violations of the law on the financing of political parties, having received irregular donations of more than 200,000 euros between 2018 and 2019. Against this background, the situation of the party is worsening and it could face more serious legal consequences if the new accusations are confirmed. For the time being, the prosecution's case is at an early stage.

Recent similar cases and the Hungarian "sovereignty protection" scheme

The Hungarian government has become increasingly vocal in its defence of Hungarian sovereignty, with the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty pointing out on its website that Brussels is "funding propaganda campaigns on issues that fall under national jurisdiction and affect national sovereignty in the deepest sense".

However, this is not the first time that financial agents linked to the Hungarian government have supported parties allied with them abroad. In 2022, during the French presidential election campaign, MKB Bank, also linked to Lőrinc Mészáros, provided a €10.6 million loan to finance the campaign of far-right, Eurosceptic, pro-Putin presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party, considered one of Fidesz's strongest European allies, used Orbán's advisers in its campaign for the ultimately unsuccessful 2024 elections, according to Polish press reports.

According to the Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny, the Hungarian government began funding anti-immigration advertisements in the run-up to the election campaign, between 28 September and 11 October, and again between 10 and 24 October. According to the newspaper, the videos were commissioned by the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office, headed by Antal Rogán, but it is almost impossible to say how much money the Hungarian side spent on them.

In recent years, Viktor Orbán has been in increasingly close contact with the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who is working to break up Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Hungarian government, through its state-owned Eximbank, has lent the Republika Srpska a HUF 45 billion loan at a very low interest rate to help Milorad Dodik's government pay off its debts, which are due to mature in 2023.

According to the investigative portal VSquare, 70 men from Hungary’s Orbán loyalist elite special police force, the TEK, were sent to Republika Srpska to facilitate Dodik's extraction to Budapest in the event of his arrest following the verdict of the court in Bosnia and Herzegovina. (The President of the Republika Srpska was indicted in 2023 for refusing to take into account the decisions of the High Representative of the international community.) The operation was ultimately thwarted because Dodik appealed and because, according to VSquare, the US indicated that it would exclude the Hungarian Counter-Terrorism Centre from any international cooperation if the operation went ahead.