Action for Democracy, a US organisation run by David Koranyi, has raised over €2.5 million with remarkable speed within a week of its launch, and then transferred the money to the Hungarian left's former prime ministerial candidate, Peter Marki-Zay and his circles, as revealed by the documents disclosed on Wednesday by Hungary's national security committee. Based on the pace of the events, the story of micro-donations – as presented by Mr Koranyi and Marki-Zay – becomes strongly questionable and it suggests that the appearance of large donor(s) was coordinated, writes a Hungarian portal.

The key findings recently presented by the national security committee regarding foreign funding provided for the Hungarian left wing has become the center of attention, the writes the Hungarian Origo news portal. Alongside the presentation prepared by the services, the committee also published another document on its website: a written response from Brigadier General Zoltan Andras Kovacs, the director-general of the National Information Centre, sent on 23 November 2022.

According to the portal, this is perhaps the most interesting part of the document:

„The fact that after AD (Action for Democracy – ed.) had started operation on 24 February 2022 and declared its objectives, it made the first money transfer (amounting to a total of 684,672 US dollars) to Oraculum 2020 Kft on 1 March 2022 indicates a well-coordinated process.” The amount is the equivalent of 228 million Hungarian forints, calculated at the average exchange rate at the time,

Origo points out.

All this strongly calls into question what Mr Koranyi and Peter Marki-Zay have claimed so far about the funds arriving from the US. Raising hundreds of millions of forints in a single week is a remarkable achievement even in the US and particularly inconceivable for a newly-founded, practically completely unknown organisation that aims to raise funds for an election campaign abroad, the portal writes.

When recently asked by Telex, a media outlet also financed from abroad, AD chief David Koranyi tried to react jokingly to a question concerning the donors: „It’s not money from some lizard creatures controlled by the CIA, but donations from citizens living in the Hungarian diaspora.” Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony’s chief advisor definitely talked about „micro-donations” when speaking to Telex, saying that the „micro-donations mostly came from Hungarians who relocated [from Hungary] years or decades ago but closely follow public life in Hungary, who are concerned about what is happening at home and worried about their families left behind in Hungary. As for the names of the donors, the law prevents their disclosure,” Mr Koranyi is quoted by Origo as saying.

It is striking that Mr Koranyi has never mentioned one particular donation of over 1 billion forints (2.5 million dollars) given to Oraculum 2020 Kft, the publisher of Ezalenyeg.hu, which attacked the Hungarian government in a multitude of articles, the portal writes. Almost a third of that sum ended up at DatAdat. The editor-in-chief of Ezalenyeg is a former press officer of ex-PM Bajnai Gordon and his former a state secretary, Viktor Szigetvari. The portal’s publisher is Oraculum 2020 Kft, whose seat is registered in Budapest’s Dohany street. The owner and manager of the company is Zoltan Pava, the son of Zoltan Pava Sr., a former MP and the former mayor of the town Komlo, delegated by the Socialist party MSZP. Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet earier wrote that the governments of Gyurcsany and Bajnai had been quite generous with the Pava family. Zoltan Pava Jr. was an advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office between 2008 and 2010.

Regarding the alleged micro-donations, the idea provoked laughter even from opposition commentators, Origo writes. On 29 September 2022, the foreign campaign financing of Peter Marki-Zay’s organisation was covered by the leftist liberal portal 24.hu. Miklos Nagy Gergely said: “”According to the official declaration, this is the money of Hungarian citizens living abroad.” Zsombor Pal said, among other things, about the mysterious donors: „All we know for sure is that he talked about multiple donors, so if we take his word for it, it is not a Hungarian diaspora member living in New York who has a lot of money and his name is the same forwards and backwards.”

In any case, it is clearer since yesterday that the story about micro-donations is difficult to defend. Mr Koranyi and his friends did not simply collect 228 million forints in a single week, but also transferred it to the Hungarian publishing company of EzaLenyeg.hu, which also conducted a smear campaign for the opposition, using nefarious means. Part of the money ended up directly with Mr Bajnai’s company, and another part with his former colleagues. The common feature of these circles is that they had received hundreds of millions of forints earlier from one big donor, who is none other than George Soros, Origo concludes.