A man from the underworld connects Orbán with the Russian mafia. He claims that his campaign was paid for by money from Russia

At the same time, Kovács also depicts his own position in this system. He was born in Ukraine, but his father was Hungarian, which allowed him to move naturally between the two environments. Thanks to his knowledge of the language and contacts, according to his own words, he became an intermediary between Ukrainian criminal groups and the Hungarian underworld. It was this role that made him a courier who transferred money and information.

From cooperation to attempted murder

In the interview, László Kovács also outlines his personal story from the environment of organized crime, which explains how he got to people connected to higher structures in the first place. He joined the group around Igor Korol, an entrepreneur and influential figure of the Budapest underworld of the 90s, after a conflict that ended in violence, but also opened the door for him to an environment where business, crime and politics were intertwined.

According to him, it was through Korol that he came into contact with people connected to wider networks of organized crime, including circles around Semion Mogilevich. Kovács describes that at first it was mainly a matter of logistics and intermediary activities, but he gradually got into tasks that, according to him, included the transfer of money and communication between individual actors.

However, the turning point in his story is not directly related to politics, but to a personal conflict. When he opposed his own group’s actions against his close acquaintance, he fell out with Korol. According to him, this escalated into open hostility and finally resulted in a brutal attack in which Kovács almost lost his life.

Money for Orbán

The most interesting part in the interview with László Kovács concerns Viktor Orbán directly. He claims that in the second half of the 1990s significantly higher sums of money began to flow through him than before, in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, which were supposed to be intended for “Vitya”, i.e. Orbán. According to him, it was a period just before the parliamentary elections in 1998, in which Orbán gained power for the first time.

Kovács describes that these finances were supposed to come from an environment of organized crime connected to Russian structures, while their goal was to secure influence in the event of Orbán’s victory. According to his own words, he never met the prime minister in person, but he claims that his name was mentioned openly and without doubt in these circles.

At the same time, he adds that after Orbán came to power, the situation changed. The people from the underworld, who he believed would benefit from his victory, gradually became undesirables, and many ended up in prison or out of the country. According to him, this should also indicate that the relationship between politics and the underworld was pragmatic and temporary.