The sequence began on March 21, when The Washington Post, citing an SVR internal document authenticated by a European intelligence service, reported that Szijjártó had routinely briefed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on confidential deliberations of the EU Foreign Affairs Council. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the piece as “disinformation.” Orbán’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Two days later, on March 23, Orbán ordered the Ministry of Justice to investigate the alleged wiretapping of Szijjártó, attributing it to Ukrainian intelligence.
“Wiretapping the phone conversations of a member of the government is a serious attack on Hungary,” Orbán stated on Facebook. Szijjártó said he had been informed that a Hungarian journalist had provided his phone number to a foreign intelligence operative, enabling the interception.
That same day, conservative outlet Mandiner, which is considered to be pro-government, published an audio recording in which investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi described himself as a “quasi-friend” of Tisza politician Anita Orbán and suggested he would be positioned to recommend “who should stay or be removed” if Tisza took power.
Three days later, on March 26, authorities formally opened an espionage investigation against Panyi, founder of investigative outlet Direkt36 and a member of the VSquare investigative consortium: Minister of Justice Bence Tuzson filed the criminal complaint.
Panyi confirmed he was the person on the recording and acknowledged providing Szijjártó’s phone number to a European intelligence agency, but rejected the espionage characterization, stating he had been conducting journalistic source work.
“Defending myself publicly would be easier if I were not bound by source protection,” he wrote. “But that remains my top priority.”
The same day, government spokesman Zoltán Kovács published photographs connecting Tamás Maróti, a dual British-Hungarian citizen identified in a declassified intelligence briefing under the alias “Buddha,” to senior Tisza figures, including campaign manager Péter Tóth.
The briefing stated Maróti had made multiple visits to the Ukrainian embassy and recently traveled to Kyiv. A second suspect, a 19-year-old identified only by initials, had allegedly traveled to Kyiv in 2023 to train with the IT Army of Ukraine, a government-run cyberwarfare unit, and had subsequently carried out what the briefing described as “several operations in the interests of Ukraine.”
Direkt36 presented the same two individuals as victims rather than operatives. According to the outlet, Hungary’s Constitutional Protection Office, the domestic counter-intelligence agency overseen by Minister Antal Rogán, who also directs government communications, had deployed an agent codenamed “Henry” to recruit both IT workers.
When that recruitment failed, their workplaces were raided on the pretext of a child pornography search. No such material was found, but the seized devices revealed Ukrainian contacts that the government subsequently publicized as evidence of espionage.
Magyar described the operation as recalling “the darkest days of communism” and declared it “an attempted coup against Hungary.”
The significance of the alleged wiretapping became clear five days later. On March 31, FrontStory, working with the international Insider consortium, published a 94-second recording of a call between Szijjártó and Lavrov from August 30, 2024.
In the recording, Lavrov stated: “I am calling at the request of Alisher, and he just asked me to remind you that you were doing something about his sister,” a reference to Gulbahor Ismailova, the sister of sanctioned Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov.
Szijjártó responded, “We will do our best to get her off.” Ismailova was removed from the EU sanctions list in March 2025.
Szijjártó confirmed the recording’s authenticity, calling the leak “the most severe, serious and most disgraceful foreign intelligence intervention” in Hungary’s electoral history and stating it was “carried out in the interests of Ukraine.”
The European Commission stated that the allegations regarding conduct at Foreign Affairs Council meetings required clarification from Budapest. Magyar stated that, if confirmed, the coordination with Lavrov constituted treason “not only against Hungary but also the European community.”
On April 2, the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs published a report applying the EU’s own Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) framework, previously used to describe Russian and Chinese influence operations, to conclude that “most of the FIMI is coming from Ukraine.” Szijjártó stated that “never before have foreign intelligence services intervened in Hungarian parliamentary elections in such an open manner.”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of April 10, 2026.
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