A fact-finding article by Direkt36 was published on Tuesday, in which it was reported that, according to the documents obtained by the paper, a well-organized operation was carried out last summer to break into the IT system of the Tisza Party. The article also reveals that when the people connected to the party wanted to put this down, police proceedings were initiated against them under the pressure of the secret service, according to several indications, with false reasons. The Constitutional Protection Office responded to the article on Tuesday with a spy story.
Direkt36 responded to the letter published by the office in a Facebook post:
“The government responded to our article published today about the secret operation against the Tisza Party by making public a letter written by the Director General of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Szabolcs Bárdos, through the national security committee of the parliament.”
“In this letter, it is said that there are two people who have been in the AH’s sights for years because of their alleged foreign secret service connections. It is stated in the document that these two people were reported to the media authority last July for child pornography. This is the only hint that the two people in the document may be the same as the two IT people we wrote about in our article.”
“Of course, we will look into the contents of the document during our further research, but it is important to note that the letter from the Director General of AH does not provide any substantive answers to the main claims of our article (and, by the way, it does not attempt to deny or correct any of the information contained therein),” writes Direkt36 in the post.
The newspaper also published a letter that was sent to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution on Monday morning (with modifications to the extent that the data of some of the affected persons were removed):
Dear Constitutional Protection Office!
I am a journalist at the Direkt36 fact-finding center and my colleague András Pethő and I are writing an article about a case related to you.
According to our knowledge, on July 8 of last year, two persons were searched by the police [itt eredetileg megadták a két ember nevét]who were connected to the Tisza Party. The NNI Cybercrime Department continued the procedure based on an anonymous report that the two persons were planning to commit a crime related to child pornography with a recording device.
According to our knowledge, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution drew the attention of the NNI management to the anonymous report before it would have reached the police. As far as we know, AH urged the management of the NNI to by all means initiate proceedings and search the houses of the people included in the report. According to our knowledge, at the request of the AH, a specialist from another secret service, the National Security Service, also participated in one of the house searches. It was also at AH’s request that the NBSZ carried out the data backup of the seized devices.
To the best of our knowledge, no information related to or referring to child pornography was found on the devices seized during house searches, but an operation against the Tisza Party, aimed at breaking into the organization’s IT system, was revealed. A number of files were found, according to which a group of unknown persons, but well-versed in the internal affairs of the Tisza Party, tried to recruit [az egyik informatikust] in order to provide access to the party’s IT systems.
Please help our work by answering the following questions:
- First, do you have any additions or comments regarding the above?
- How did AH find out about the anonymous report that originally came to the NMHH internet hotline but was forwarded to the NNI before it even reached the NNI?
- What exactly was the communication between NNI and AH in the matter? On behalf of AH, who or who formulated requests and possibly instructions?
- Did the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office, which oversees AH’s activities, have any role in AH’s participation in this case involving persons connected to the Tisza Party? If so, please detail what the Cabinet Office’s role was and who acted on their part in this matter?
- How common is it for the AH to take a role in investigating a child pornography report? How is this compatible with AH’s goals?
- Was AH aware that an organized operation was taking place against the Tisza Party with the aim of crashing the party’s IT system? If so, how did AH find out about it?
- Was or is AH in contact with persons or groups working to weaken the Tisza Party? If yes, please share details about it.
- To AH’s knowledge, who is the name VE and Henry in the files, [a Tisza Párt egyik informatikusát] person trying to recruit and what organization is behind it?
- As far as we know, the AH later influenced the police work in the case. In December, under the pressure of the AH, another search was ordered at the apartments of the two people involved, and in addition, both of them were interrogated as suspects on the suspicion of misuse of military equipment. In addition, under pressure from the AH, the police decided not to investigate the operation against the Tisza Party more closely. Why did AH formulate such requests and possibly instructions?
Please answer our questions by Monday (March 23) at 4 p.m., the letter says.
According to the paper, a similar set of questions was sent to the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office.
Direkt36 wrote in the article that in the middle of last summer, when there was a fierce political struggle between Fidesz and the Tisza Party, the National Investigation Agency received a report that two Hungarian men were suspected of child pornography. One of the intelligence agencies, the Constitutional Protection Office, drew their attention to the announcement and put pressure on the police to search the houses of the two persons, a 19-year-old and a 38-year-old man, as quickly as possible.
During the house search, the investigators were faced with the fact that they arrived at two IT experts connected to the Tisza Party, thus they stumbled upon a case of political importance. Dozens of data carriers were seized, including servers, phones, laptops, and SD cards. However, no traces of child pornography were later found on these. However, hundreds of screenshots containing exchanges of messages were found, and a very strange recruitment attempt emerged from them. An unknown person using the name Henry tried to ensnare the younger computer scientist in the first half of 2025 to help him overthrow the Tisza Party before the elections. You can read the entire article here.
