Action for Democracy, an organisation that supported the election campaign of the Hungarian Left with billions from overseas, has connections that can be traced all the way to the American secret service, the CIA, according to the report published by the National Security Committee on Wednesday.

Hungary’s national security services have mapped the contact network of Action For Democracy and found that the organisation could be linked to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which open sources describe as „the CIA’s official representation abroad”.

The declassified material reveals that Allen Weinstein, co-founder of NED, confirmed back in 1991 that

“a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”.

NED was founded in the United States in 1983, with the primary objective of promoting democratic processes in countries across the world, the news portal Origo writes.

The report pointed out that the NED played a role in the Belarusian opposition prime ministerial candidate’s 2006 campaign, supported opposition parties during the Arab Spring in 2011, provided larger sums to Uyghur groups in China and financed NGOs in Hong Kong in 2019.

The organisation receives an annual allocation from the United States budget. It is included in the US Agency for International Development (USAID) chapter of the US State Department and is under congressional oversight as a non-governmental organization. In 2019, NED received 135 million US dollars in funding exclusively from US government agencies.

NED discontinued its active operations in Hungary at the end of the 1990s, when Hungary’s accession to NATO became a certainty.

In 2014, NED’s management assessed the domestic political situation in Hungary to be so worrisome that intensive deliberations began on relaunching activities in Hungary. They concluded that should the organisation decide to re-appear in Hungary, it would not open an office in the country, but would seek Hungarian partners to achieve the organisation’s goals,

the disclosed report reads.

Viewed through this lens, the activities carried out by the NED affiliated Action for Democracy become even more interesting. The organisation headed by David Koranyi, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony’s advisor, helped the Hungarian Left’s election campaign with approximately 3 billion Hungarian forints (approx. 7 million euros).

The report lists the recipients and the amount of funding from Action for Democracy as follows: 1.8 billion forints (appr. 4.4 million euros) for Everyone’s Hungary Movement (MMM) launched by Peter Marki-Zay, the Left’s then prime ministerial candidate; more than 1 billion forints (appr. 2.4 million euros) for Oraculum 2020 Kft, the publisher of Ezalenyeg.hu, a portal closely linked to the failed former PM Ferenc Gyurcsany’s DK party; more than 150 million forints (appr. 370 thousand euros) for former Hungarian PM Gordon Bajnai’s DatAdat company group; and roughly 3 million forints (appr. 7 thousand euros) for Gemius Hungary Kft.

It is noteworthy that of the above-mentioned amounts, MMM forwarded 1.4 billion while Oraculum 2020 Kft transferred 324 million forints to the DatAdat group run by ex- Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai, the former Secret Services Minister Adam Ficsor and their associates, meaning that the businesses involved in the united left-wing’s campaign could pocket sizable sums. As is well known,

both Bajnai and Ficsor have quite good contacts in the US.

A good number of US experts have turned up in the companies they run.

The close overseas ties are confirmed by a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks. The document sent by the embassy to Washington – to the CIA, the US Department of Defense and the State Department – reveals that the Americans paid special attention to Mr Ficsor among the prospective members of the Bajnai government.

Mr Ficsor, who was then nominated for the post of intelligence minister, was described as having good relations with the embassy and was considered worthy of participating in the US State Department’s International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP).

Interestingly, Adam Ficsor served as intelligence minister for only five months before resigning on the grounds that he considered the position incompatible with his intention to stand as an MSZP candidate in the 2010 elections.

However, according to an earlier report by Index, the real reason for the unexpected resignation was that Mr Ficsor, after a few months of gaining insight into the Hungarian secret services and accessing sensitive material, accepted the invitation of the Americans to participate in the IVLP programme.

Shortly after the 2010 elections, Gordon Bajnai himself went to the US to take up a visiting lectureship at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

Even from within his own circles, people are convinced that Mr Bajnai is being controlled from abroad.

His confidant and “old comrade-in-arms” Gyula Gansperger described the former head of government in the following way:

“In Hungary, – I think – there are basically foreign forces and financiers behind the moves of the whole opposition. (…) Who are these forces?” “One of these is, let’s put it this way, the Soros Empire. The other part is composed of big-capital groups, that is, from Germany and especially the United States, who want to have influence here. I think Gordon [Gordon Bajnai] is their man.”

There is no doubt that the recent parliamentary elections in Hungary were influenced by the US. The DatAdat group, linked to Gordon Bajnai and Adam Ficsor, seems to have played a key role in this.

It is worth remembering that Peter Marki-Zay mentioned the rolling dollars from the US at the end of August, followed by a number of contradictory statements on the matter. Several complaints were filed, which led to investigations by the police and the National Tax and Customs Office of Hungary. The procedures are still ongoing. As the money from abroad may have impacted Hungary’s sovereignty, the national security services have also launched and investigation. The findings which were declassified and released on Wednesday, are already a result of this process.