Russian intelligence services may have compromising video on Orban — The Insider

The Insider has previously conducted its own investigation, which shows that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was extremely negative towards Russia and dependence on Russian gas at the beginning of his career, and then at one point something changed – and Orban became ‘Russia's best friend in Europe’.

Russian mafia clans and ‘big dirty’ Russian money played a role in this.

The investigation is no less relevant today amid the abnormal activity of the Hungarian prime minister to protect Putin's interests.

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As The Insider has found out, one of the reasons for Viktor Orban's loyalty to Putin may be the compromising video on the Hungarian politician obtained by criminal leader Semyon Mogilevich back in the mid-90s.

When Fidesz party leader Viktor Orbán was first elected prime minister in 1998, unlike his predecessors, he avoided visits to Moscow and often criticised Russia, especially after Putin came to power.

For example, in 2007, Orbán, then the leader of the largest opposition party, harshly criticised the government for being ‘blind’ to Russia's ‘growing influence’ on Hungary through its energy giants. He suggested that Hungary should focus on Europe, not Russia.

‘The younger generation that supports us must prevent Hungary from becoming Gazprom's funniest barrack!’ Orban said, alluding to the Soviet joke that Hungary was the funniest barrack in the socialist camp.

In 2008, he continued to criticise the Kremlin, calling other European governments ‘Putin's puppets’ and the previous prime minister's support for the South Stream gas project a national betrayal.

Suddenly, in 2009, everything changed dramatically. In November, Orbán unexpectedly arrived in St. Petersburg for the congress of the “United Russia” party, where he met Putin. He stopped criticising Putin and Russia altogether, and when he became prime minister of Hungary a year later, he became known as one of Putin's key apologists in Europe.

What happened to Orban during this period? Perhaps he was influenced by an event that seemed to have nothing to do with Hungary – the arrest in Moscow of the criminal leader Semyon Mogilevich.

A suitcase with money

German journalist Jürgen Roth managed to talk to businessman Dietmar Klodo, who has a rather criminal past and served time in prison for making explosives. He acted as an intermediary for the Russian Semyon Mogilevich in transferring money to bribe politicians.

‘In the 90-s, I was living in Budapest, where I was engaged in consulting and owned a private security company, SAS,’ said Klodo. ’In Budapest, I met a well-known businessman, Semyon Mogilevich. We developed a relationship of trust, partly because we were Jews. Because of this close relationship of trust, he instructed me in the mid-nineties, between 1993 and 1996, to transfer money to various people. One of them was a man called Sandor Pinter (former Hungarian Interior Minister – The Insider). For me, Pinter was just one of many corrupt individuals to whom I handed envelopes on behalf of Mogilevich. I received him and other people in my house at Meggy Uca 19, in the 3rd district of Budapest. They took the money in the envelopes. It was 10,000 German marks. This went on until 1996, and later these operations were carried out through someone else.

One day, in the spring of 1994, shortly before the parliamentary elections, Mogilevich's translator brought me a suitcase with about a million German marks in it. The suitcase was intended for a young man. But this guy didn't want to come into my house. I said to him:

‘Listen. I have a suitcase with the damn money. And I'm not going to go out with it. So if you refuse, then I'll pass it on to Mogilevich, and let him take the suitcase with the millions with him. I don't care.’

And he came up to me with another elderly gentleman, and I brought the suitcase with the money. I was not interested in who he was at the time. It was only after the parliamentary elections that I realised that the guy was Viktor Orban of Fidesz. Mogilevich called it a ‘pivotal contribution to the election campaign’.

Viktor Orban at the beginning of his political career

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Other individuals who regularly contributed included Tonhauser Laszlo, then head of the organised crime department at the Budapest police; Sándor István, a former senior police investigator; and József Laszlo, an influential person in the media.

The main reason why I was the one to hand over the money was that I had nothing to do with the Russians, and as the head of the international section of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, I was taken quite seriously. I declare under penalty of perjury that I told the truth. (Regensburg, 06/15/2016)’.

The real reason why the envelopes had to be handed over to Hungarian politicians at Claudeau's home and not on the street was not his concern for the safety of the money.

The process of handing over the money at Claudeau's home was filmed by a hidden camera ‘for insurance purposes’, and the tapes were handed over to Mogilevich.

The Mogilevich deal

Semyon Mogilevich moved to Budapest in 1990 and lived here until the early 2000s (300 metres from the Russian embassy). During the privatisation period, he acquired control over a weapons manufacturing plant in Hungary through various fraudulent schemes. His main activity, according to the FBI, was money laundering for the Solntsev organised crime group (OCG).

Today, Mogilevich is among the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Since the 1990s, the FBI, the Italian police, and the Swiss intelligence services have been interested in him, and in 2003 he was put on the Interpol international wanted list. He had to move from Budapest to a house near Moscow and stay in Russia.

Swiss counter-intelligence suspected Mogilevich of collusion with Russian special services. This is what its report, dated June 2007, says.

‘Numerous members of the organised crime group are protected by state bodies, including the FSB. This is the case, for example, of Semyon Mogilevich, one of the most powerful figures in Russian organised crime, who has been wanted by the FBI for fraud and money laundering since 2003 and who is untouched in Russia. It is alleged that he was even personally present during the Russian-Ukrainian gas negotiations.

So far, none of the leaders of the organised crime groups in Russia has been brought to justice, which can hardly be explained by the lack of success in the investigations. On the contrary, the leaders of criminal organisations enjoy protection at the highest level.’

In 2008, Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow, not at the request of the FBI, but in connection with the Arbat-Prestige case on suspicion of tax evasion. Mogilevich spent a year and a half in custody and was released on his own recognizance in July 2009, and the case against him was soon dropped ‘due to the absence of a crime’.

In order to be released, Mogilevich had to part with some of his property and also provide the Kremlin with dirt on Viktor Orban.

‘Unfortunately, Orban has now become a puppet following Putin's orders,’ Dietmar Klodo told The Insider. The businessman is sure that in exchange for his freedom, Mogilevich could have handed over compromising tapes to Nikolai Patrushev (Secretary of the Russian Security Council).

In any case, Orbán was unexpectedly invited to Moscow just after Mogilevich's arrest, and it was then that Orbán made a sharp reversal in his position.

One of the evidences of Orban's friendship with Putin was the restoration of monuments to Soviet soldiers in Budapest, not only to those who liberated the country from the Nazi invaders, but also to those ‘who died in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising of 1956’.

Interestingly, this was done by the ‘reputable’ Russian businessman Andrei Skoch, whose name, like that of Semyon Mogilevich, is associated with the Solntsevskaya OCG.

In 2012, Skoch, together with the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defence, restored monuments in Budapest to Soviet soldiers who ‘died during the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising’.

When Putin laid flowers at this monument to those killed during the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 2015, a scandal erupted in Hungary. The Hungarian press accused the Orban government of violating the country's constitution by allowing the monument to be restored.

During his premiership, Viktor Orban has met with Putin several times. According to Orbán, ‘relations with Russia cannot be built on the basis of principles, only benefits are important’; ‘Crimea is a complex issue’; the EU needs ‘a common space from Lisbon to Vladivostok’. Orban made these statements after Putin's visit to Hungary in 2015. Orban said that the EU sanctions against Russia (imposed in 2014 – ed.) should be lifted.

Another interesting topic is the €10 billion expansion of the nuclear power plant in the Hungarian city of Paks. The project is being financed by Russia itself. To ensure the success of the nuclear power plant, in 2015, Hungary even introduced an additional tax on solar panels.

When the Hungarian government called for the expansion of the Paks NPP, Russia's Rosatom was selected for the construction without a tender, and the contract documents were classified for 30 years.

When the European Commission launched an investigation into the non-transparency of the deal, the Hungarian government claimed it was ‘political pressure’. As a result, the investigation came to nothing.