The US Embassy in Budapest has launched a billboard campaign against the Hungarian government's pro-peace stance with the help of old leftist confidants. A compilation published by the Origo news portal reveals the participants and recalls their relationship with the Gyurcsany governments.

Joe Biden’s footsoldier, US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman, has implemented a pro-war billboard campaign funded by US budget money with the help of former Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s old confidants. In recent days, billboards have appeared across the country with the text demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, drawing parallels with the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Origo recalls.

The US-funded campaign seeks to challenge the Hungarian government’s pro-peace position, which advocates for an immediate ceasefire. The billboards reveal that a political campaign was launched by the Facebook page Nyugati Palyan (On Western Track) with the support of the US Embassy in Budapest – in other words, the embassy is paying for it.

A strange Facebook page

The Nyugati Palyan page only exists in social media, on Facebook and Instagram, and has around 30,000 followers (not at all an outstanding number for a Facebook page).

It was launched in February 2020 and operated with the support of the Embassy of the United States of America in Budapest by Flow PR Kft, a communications agency and integrated corporate communications campaign division of Splendidea Communications Kft.

The site advertises itself with the platitude that its aim is „to reach out to those interested in the present and future of Hungary.” They believe Hungary should continue on the Western path. „We provide arguments for this, and we would like to convince as many Hungarians as possible,” they write. In practice, this means demonstrating how enticing the West, the EU and NATO are, as opposed to the East.

Advertisements worth hundreds of millions

Since its launch in February 2020, Nyugati Palyan has spent nearly 139 million forints on Facebook and Instagram advertising. This puts them in 13th place in the ranking of pages with the most ads. Of the leftist players, only the Erosito (272 million) and Ezalenyeg.hu (228 million) spent more on advertising than them. Ezalenyeg.hu is funded with the ‘rolling dollars’ received from the US to help the Hungarian Left’s campaign.

Splendidea Communications Kft, the company operating the US-funded propaganda website, was established on 20 September 2002. It currently employs 24 people and its main activity is PR and communications. According to the latest financial data, in 2021 it achieved a net turnover of nearly 300 million forints, up 27.58 per cent on the previous year. Their profit before tax also increased by 28.91 per cent to 26 million forints.

However, this was not their most successful year, as they achieved a net revenue of more than 341 million forints in 2017, and we would not be surprised if the 2022 figures would exceed this.

Gyurcsany’s confidants

Splendidea used to operate under the name Privy Council Consultancy Ltd. and has strong links to the post-communist-leftist elite. Privy was part of Capital Group Zrt, a group of companies also including the company Political Capital. The latter is one of the best-known leftist political consultancies, which from 2002 was initially close to the former SZDSZ party (Alliance of Free Democrats) and then paved the way for the leftward-shifting MDF party (Hungarian Democratic Forum) into oblivion. According to a 2007 article in the Hungarian economic paper Vilaggazdasag, more than 75 per cent of the group’s turnover was generated by Privy Council, a PR agency under Capital Group Zrt.

Political Capital’s clients at the time included the MDF, for whom they had been providing political advice since the 2004 European Parliament campaign. It is worth recalling a parliamentary question submitted in 2005 by Norbert Erdos, a Fidesz MP, in opposition at the time, to Istvan Hiller, then head of the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage.

This revealed that the predecessor of Splendidea received 13,920,000 Hungarian forints (36 843 euros) from then-PM Gyurcsany’s circles for strategic and communication consultancy.

On 8 September 2005, the news outlet Heti Valasz reported that the then leftist-led Municipality of Budapest had entrusted Privy with the task of communicating about road reconstruction (“traffic jam communicator”). This meant a gross revenue of 28.6 million forints (75 806 euros), which represented almost one tenth of the Capital Group’s revenue. The article is now only available via the Wayback Machine website.

From SZDSZ to Jobbik

The two key managers of the group are two old SZDSZ cadres, Krisztian Szabados and Zoltan Somogyi. The latter was previously CEO of Splendidea and co-founder of Political Capital alongside Szabados.

A sociologist by training, Mr Somogyi, who is currently studying philosophy, joined the SZDSZ as a party member in 1990 at the age of 17, and then resigned from the party in 1999 because he had entered the business world. Besides Political Capital, he also worked as campaign manager for the MDF party and as an advisor to it’s leader Ibolya David, not very successfully, as the party lost all of its parliamentary seats in the 2010 elections.

Between 2006 and 2010, the Political Capital group received a lot of commissions from the second Gyurcsany government, and the company received 432.2 million forints (1.3 million euros in today’s money) of public funding. A part of this, some 190 million forints, came from the National Security Agency.

The then premier’s trust in Mr Somogyi is also confirmed by the fact that he was involved in writing Ferenc Gyurcsany’s campaign programme in 2004. Most recently, he has turned up around the Jobbik party, working as a consultant and analyst for the Jobbik-affiliated Civitas Institute.

Gyurcsany’s former key man’s advice is also in demand elsewhere. In 2022, he participated in the so-called Polgari Platform (Citizens’ Platform) together with Zoltan Kesz, a leader of the Mindenki Magyarorszaga Mozgalom (Everyone’s Hungary Movement), and the Platform’s digitalisation study was included in the election programme of the united Left. In December 2021, Mr Somogyi himself announced that an agreement had been reached between Peter Marki-Zay and the Civic Platform NGO.

The managing director of Splendidea, the company that has implemented the current billboard campaign with US money, is Krisztian Szabados, who has been with the company since 2007 and is currently the managing director of Flow PR Kft., and was the owner and director of Political Capital between 2001-2019. Splendidea’s CEO is Peter Botond Sajti, who started his career at the RTL Klub television channel as an online editor between 2002 and 2003. Later, between 2003 and 2010, he worked at Privy Council Communications, Splendidea’s predecessor, and since then he has been working for Flow PR.

Privy Council Ltd. changed its name in 2008 and continued to operate under the name Privy Council Communications Consultancy Ltd. until 2010. Subsequently, between 2010 and 2013, the company operated under the name Flow Public Relations Kaft., and since 7 June 2013 it has been operating under the current name Splendidea Communications Kft.

Since 2021, the company has been based in a building in central Budapest. Interestingly, several companies of Krisztian Szabados and Zoltan Somogyi are also registered there.

Perhaps the most interesting of these is the Communication and Image Institute Research and Service Ltd. ( Kommunikáció és Imázs Intézet Kutató és Szolgáltató Kft.) which achieved a net turnover of 80.1 million forints in 2022, an increase of 18.92 per cent. Mr Somogyi took in 20 million forints (53 011 euros) in dividends last year.

The network chart in the company database clearly shows that Political Capital Kft. is also part of Splendidea, which operates the Nyugati Palyan accounts.

In addition to the billboards, the Nyugati Palyan has already launched its „Ruszkik Haza” (Russians Go Home!) campaign on its Facebook page, although it has not yet appeared in the ads.

The above shows that the pro-war campaign, supported by the US Embassy in Budapest, is being driven by the Gyurcsany-era confidants.