Orban Loyalist Who Ran ‘Soros List’ Targets Foreign Influence

Zoltan Simon
·4 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- A long-time loyalist of Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned civil society groups and the media that they risked becoming targets of a new institution tasked with rolling back foreign influence in Hungary.

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Tamas Lanczi, who heads the Sovereignty Protection Agency since it started work last week, said he’ll collaborate with other arms of the state, including the intelligence services, to collect information and expose organizations that receive money from abroad.

While the agency won’t have the powers to prosecute, its creation has sent a chill among Hungarian groups who’ve managed to stay outside Orban’s orbit. The European Union on Wednesday announced a probe saying the law underpinning the new institution violated democratic norms. The US has said the agency will have “draconian tools” to “intimidate and punish” dissenting voices.

“Everyone has a right to know who wants to interfere in Hungarian elections or in Hungarian political life outside of election season,” Lanczi said in an interview on Wednesday. “Obviously financial incentives lend themselves to quite strong influence.”

The agency is the brainchild of Orban, who returned to power in 2010 with the aim of dismantling of liberal democracy. He’s made headway in doing so, while maintaining Hungary’s membership in the EU and the NATO military alliance as well as striking up close ties with Russia and China.

His successes turned him into an inspiration for like-minded populists including Donald Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei. At the same time, many in the West see Orban’s ability to blur the line between democracy and autocracy as one of the most potent threats for the global order.

Lanczi said he’ll probe foreign influence regardless of its origin and will be non-partisan. His past as a loyalist may make that difficult. He’s served as a staffer under an Orban minister, advised the government as a think-tank analyst and most recently ran a news website for state television, the heart of Orban’s information machine that rarely airs opposition views.

‘Soros List’

As the editor of a pro-government weekly in 2018, Lanczi gained notoriety for publishing a “Soros list,” a tally of hundreds of names from civil society, academia and media that he said were funded by George Soros, the long-time bogeyman of Orban and other nationalist leaders. The list sparked a furor in Hungary for stigmatizing its targets following anti-government demonstrations.

While he doesn’t plan to draw up lists now, he said the aim of his agency will be similar: to call out those who receive foreign money and to make the connection with attempts to sway Hungarian politics, which Orban has dominated for the last 14 years.

Jozsef Peter Martin, head of the Hungarian chapter of Transparency International, calls Orban’s system and the new agency “Russia-light.” The global graft watchdog last week confirmed Hungary’s place as the nation perceived to be the most corrupt in the EU.

“Obviously the aim isn’t really to defend sovereignty, otherwise Chinese or Russian influence would have to be probed,” Martin said. “The aim is manipulation and to have a chilling effect on organizations that are critical of the government.”

Bleeding Critics

Probing potential Russian and Chinese influence via classified nuclear and rail contracts worth billions of dollars won’t be a priority for now, Lanczi said. “Just because it’s classified isn’t necessarily an issue of sovereignty,” he said.

Lanczi’s agency was set up after a political action committee tied to the opposition was reported to have raised funds from the US to stand against Orban in the 2022 parliamentary election. The legislation that underpins his agency now makes that a crime punishable by jail time.

Averting a repeat of that situation in European Parliament and municipal elections this year is a priority, Lanczi said.

The irony isn’t lost in Hungary. Orban has worked to financially bleed critical media, non-governmental organizations and political parties of domestic funds while lavishing state resources on those that support him.

He’s also sought to export his brand of “illiberal democracy.” A bank close to the government helped finance Marine Le Pen’s bid in the last French presidential election. Orban has also publicly endorsed Trump and his ministers regularly stump for far-right candidates around Europe.

“I’m responsible for Hungary’s sovereignty,” Lanczi said in the basement of a cafe that’s a favorite with government officials. “Each country decides how sensitively it reacts to attacks against its sovereignty.”

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