Suitcase with cash from the mafia for Viktor Orbán: Does Putin have video compromising evidence?

On April 7, 2018 Vladimir Putin arrives on an official visit to Hungary for a meeting with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – the leader of a European state, considered one of the most loyal to the Kremlin. An investigation by The Insider revealed that one of the reasons for his loyalty may be Compromising video about Orbán, filmed in the mid-90s by the king of crime Semyon Mogilevich. As a result, Russian-Hungarian friendship grew, and money from joint treaties flowed into opaque offshore accounts.

In 1998, Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) leader Viktor Orbán He was elected Prime Minister for the first time. But unlike his predecessors, he missed a visit to Moscow and frequently attacked Russia, especially after Vladimir Putin came to power. For example, in 2007, Orbán sharply criticized the government for being “blind to the growing influence” that Russia exerts through its huge energy giants, and suggested that Hungary be a European player. “These young people who follow us must not allow Hungary to become Gazprom’s most cheerful barracks,” Orban said, alluding to Hungary’s pre-1989 status as “Moscow’s most cheerful barracks.” In 2008, he continued to criticize the Kremlin – called other European governments “puppets of Moscow” and described the previous government’s approval of the South Stream project as high treason.

Suddenly, in 2009, everything changed. Orban unexpectedly appeared at the United Russia gathering in St. Petersburg, where he met with Putin. He immediately stopped criticizing Russia, and a year later, when Orbán became Hungary’s prime minister again, he became one of Putin’s key apologists in Europe.

What happened to Orbán in such a short period of time? Could the arrest of the criminal king Semyon Mogilevich in Moscow have influenced the Hungarian leader?

A suitcase full of money

In fact, the story begins much earlier, back in the mid-90s. We learned about this thanks to the German journalist Jürgen Roth, who managed to untie the mouth of businessman Dietmar Clodo and get him to talk (Roth published their conversation in his book “Dirty Democracy”). Clodo is a German who in his youth was involved in the RAF (Red Army Faction, a left-wing terrorist organization that was active in West Germany in the 1970s) He founded the security company SAS, which provides security escorts for transporting cash and security services in Germany, France and Russia. In the 90s, Klódó lived in Budapest and was the head of a department at the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Klodo spent 8.5 years in a Hungarian prison for making bombs (he claimed his innocence) and was released in 2011.

Clodo met Mogilevich through the nephew of Sergei Mikhailov (Mihas, one of the leaders of the Solntsevo mafia), whom Clodo in turn met in Afghanistan. Here is a written statement (affidavit) signed by Dietmar Klodo (The Insider has a copy):

“In the 1990s, I lived in Budapest, where I consulted and owned a private security company, SAS. There I met the famous businessman Semyon Mogilevich. We established a relationship of trust, in part because we were both religious Jews. In the mid-90s, in fact, between 1993 and 1996, he asked me to hand over cash to different people.

One of them was Sándor Pinter (who is now the Hungarian Minister of the Interior). At that time, I only knew that he was a senior police officer and that he worked for Mr. Mogilevich. I was officially introduced to him later, after he left his job in the police. This happened in 1996-1997, Semyon Mogilevich asked me to give him money, and I did it. It was clear to me that these people are influential. For me, Sándor Pinter was just one of the many corrupt people to whom I handed envelopes with money on behalf of Mogilevich. He and other people came to my home on Meggy Utca 19, in the third district of Budapest. They took 10,000 marks of money in envelopes. This practice continued in 1996, later the money was transferred through another person.

Once in the spring of 1994, on the eve of the parliamentary elections, Mogilevich’s translator brought me a suitcase with almost 1 million Deutsche Marks.

This money was supposed to be handed over to a young man. However, the man in question refused to enter my home. I told him: “Listen, I have a suitcase with the damn money and I will not go out on the street with it. If you refuse to enter, I will return the suitcase with a million to Mr. Mogilevich. I don’t care.” He went up to me with another older-looking gentleman, and I handed him the suitcase. I didn’t care who he was.

It was only after the parliamentary elections that I found out that the young man was Viktor Orbán from Fidesz. Mogilevich called it “a decisive factor in the election campaign”. Other people who regularly visited me to get their money included László Tonhauser, who was at the time head of the organized crime department of the Budapest police, former senior police investigator István Sándor and László Júst, an influential media personality.

The main reason why I was assigned this task of transferring money was the fact that I had nothing to do with the Russians, and as the head of the international section of the independent Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, I was considered a serious person. I declare, under responsibility for perjury, that I told the truth.
Regensburg, 15.06.2016″

Dietmar Klódo also gave an interview to the Austrian TV channel ORF, in which he said that in the 1990s, Sándor Pinter received 10,000 German marks a month for “the Hungarian police turning a blind eye to Mogilevich’s intrigues with Ukraine and Russia.” The main office of the criminal king was located in Budapest.

Former Hungarian Minister of Education Bálint Magyar, who wrote the famous book “Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary”, revealed corruption schemes to The Insider, from which it becomes clear that the connections between Sándor Pinter and Dietmar Klodo have been known for a long time: “We had suspicions about these connections in the 90s. In 1998, the Alliance of Free Democrats even gave a press conference about the corrupt links between Sándor Pinter and Dietmar Clodo.

However, Hungarian politicians and law enforcement officers deny knowing anything about Dietmar Clodo. Back in 1999, Sándor Pinter told the Hungarian media that he had once attended business negotiations in which Dietmar Klódo’s wife was secretary, but it was a coincidence. Yes, he had heard of this man, but he had not met him in person. Government spokesman Zoltán Kovács declined to comment to The Insider on the information about these corruption links.

Claudeau’s accusations are easy to ignore, as he is a man of dubious reputation. But things would turn around if these allegations could be confirmed by documents. And Mogilevich is the person who could hold such evidence.

The real reason why the envelopes of money had to be handed over inside Claudeau’s house and not outside was not that he was afraid that the money would be stolen. A hidden camera “as a precaution” recorded the procedure for handing over the money and the films were handed over to Mogilevich.

Mogilevich’s deal

Semyon Mogilevich moved to Budapest in 1990 and lived there until the beginning of the 2000s (his home is located 300 meters from the Russian embassy). During privatization in Hungary, he managed to take control of an arms factory by implementing various schemes. According to the FBI, his main business is money laundering for the Solntsevo crime syndicate.

Currently, Mogilevich is one of the 10 most wanted criminals by the FBI. He attracted the attention of the FBI, Italian police and Swiss law enforcement agencies back in the 1990s, and in 2003 Interpol included him in the international list of most wanted persons. As a result, he moved from Budapest to his villa near Moscow and has not left Russia since.

The issue of Mogilevich was raised again in 2000, when Major of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Melnichenko made public the recordings known to him. В един от записаните разговори с бившия президент на Украйна Леонид Кучма, бившият ръководител на СБУ Леонид Деркач споменава, че макар официално Могилевич да живее в Унгария, „той става съсед на (руския комунистически лидер) Генадий Зюганов, чиято вила в московското предградие е в съседство с тази на Могилевич“. В отговор на изненаданата реакция на Кучма, Деркач уточнява: „Е, той поддържа добри отношения с Путин от времето на Ленинград“. „Трябва да внимаваме с него“, отбелязва Кучма. Междувременно през 2005 г. СБУ мистериозно унищожи досието на Могилевич.

In the first stage of his new Moscow life, Mogilevich did not face any challenges. According to FBI information from 1998, he is the owner of the luxury Baltschug-Kempinski Hotel, located right next to the Kremlin. Today, Baltschug-Kempinski belongs to an offshore company, and according to Fox TV, a Slovak company wants to buy it. Швейцарската служба за анализи и превенция (DAP, понастоящем част от Федералната разузнавателна служба NDB) подозира, че Могилевич е бил в тайно споразумение с руските специални служби. Ето какво се казва в доклад на DAP през 2007 г.:

“For a long time, it has been assumed that many leaders of organized crime were protected by state agencies, i.e. the FSB. For example, Semyon Mogilevich, one of the most influential pillars of Russian organized crime, has been wanted by the FBI since 2003 for fraud and money laundering. Russian law enforcement agencies have never bothered him. He is said to have attended the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations on natural gas supplies. So far, none of the leaders of organized crime has been tried in Russia, and not because of a lack of evidence against them. On the contrary: the leaders of criminal organizations enjoy protection at the highest level.”

But in 2008, after writing this report, Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow not at the request of the FSB, but for tax evasion in connection with the Arbat Prestige case. Mogilevich spent a year and a half in prison, and in June he was released on bail without the right to leave Moscow. Soon the case was closed “due to lack of elements of a crime”. Dietmar Clodo believes that in order to secure his release, Mogilevich handed over part of his assets and shared with the Kremlin his documents compromising Viktor Orbán.

“Unfortunately, today Orbán is a puppet who follows Putin’s instructions,” Clodo told The Insider. He believes that in exchange for his freedom, Mogilevich handed over the compromising recordings to the former director of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev. However, Orbán was suddenly invited to visit Moscow immediately after Mogilevich’s arrest, and it was at that moment that Orbán made a sharp turn in his policy.

The Solntsevskaya Mafia and the Restoration of a Soviet Monument in Budapest

One testament to the friendship between Orbán and Putin was the decision to restore monuments to Soviet soldiers in Budapest – those who liberated Hungary from the fascists and those “who died in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising of 1956”. It should be noted that in communist Hungary they used the term “uprising”, while after the fall of communism, the Hungarians defined this event as the “Revolution of 1956”. To understand the significance of this event for the Hungarian people, you need to read the national constitution, which reads: “Our present freedom has grown out of the soil of the revolution of 1956.”

The Insider reporter could not find a single supporter of the Russian world in Budapest. Hundreds of thousands of people left Hungary for Europe and the United States after Soviet tanks brutally suppressed mass protests. They lived in refugee camps, almost every family in Hungary was affected by the tragedy. Some of the refugees and their descendants returned to Hungary after 1989. Hungarians like to talk about János Kádár’s “goulash socialism”. It is widely believed that after the bloody events of 1956, the communist dictatorship in Hungary was significantly mitigated and some elements of the market economy were resolved. Some Hungarian historians, such as Andreas Platka, believe that Hungary began its countdown to capitalism in 1956 because “after the revolution, only the façade of socialism was preserved.”

What really matters is not the fact that a Soviet monument has been restored, but who did it. It was Done by the “respected (in the criminal world)” businessman Andrey Skoch, who, like Mogilevich, is closely connected with the mafia in Solntsevo. In 2012, Scotch Recover monuments to Soviet soldiers who “died in the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956” in joint efforts with the Russian Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense. In 2015, Scotch succeeded in his venture and his files incriminating his links to organized crime mysteriously disappeared under unclear circumstances from the archives of the DGSI (Directorate-General for Internal Security of France). However, this incident became known and the agency began investigation of the case.

In 2012, Scotch published an entry on his LiveJournal blog, which was later removed, in which he described his “noble” mission in Budapest: “Both sides agreed that not only the cemetery should be restored, but also the reputation of the Russian state. The restored memorial will be a symbol of full mutual understanding of the most complex historical events, and the openness of the Hungarian government will certainly improve relations between the two peoples at the state level.” Then “full mutual understanding” faces challenges. In 2015, when Putin laid a wreath at the monument to those who died in the suppression of the “Hungarian Uprising”, a scandal erupted. Hungarian media accused the Fidesz government of violating the constitution.

Together in business

We cannot ignore the fact that the Kremlin has never used Mogilevich’s compromising documents against Orbán, and it may even be that Orbán’s visit to Moscow was just a coincidence. However, the Kremlin uses not only the stick, but also the carrot. Russia is actively developing economic cooperation with Hungary, which benefits both Hungarian and Russian taxpayers. Since becoming prime minister, Orbán has met with Vladimir Putin many times.

„… Put aside the principles, ideologies and look at the interest… This is the Hungarian approach; … You should know that the issue of Crimea is a complex issue of international law… EU… needs a free trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok,” Orban said in an interview with Politico after Putin’s visit to Hungary in 2015.

On the eve of Putin’s April 2018 visit to Budapest, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó noted that “international sanctions have seriously affected relations between Hungary and Russia.” In addition to sanctions, there is another important topic: the improvement of the Paks nuclear power plant worth 10 billion euros. euro. This project is financed by Russia and this is officially a loan. The Hungarian government, in order to ensure the success of the nuclear power plant, introduced a tax on solar batteries.

Balint Majar firmly believed that both leaders had a stake in this deal. He pointed out that when the Hungarian government talked about improving the Paks nuclear power plant, Rosatom had already been selected for this draft without bidding, while the contract documents were classified for 30 years. When the European Commission launched an in-depth investigation, the deal appeared to be opaque. The Hungarian government claims that the investigation has “political nuances”. And so the investigation did not yield results. Madjar explained: “The EU does not have supranational bodies to investigate corruption, it has a European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), but its task is to assist national agencies in their fight against corruption. In other words, it was the Hungarian officials who were in charge of the European Commission’s investigation – the very same people who were suspected of corruption.”

It was not only the nuclear deal that caused concern, but also other energy contracts. 161 mln. euros were Redirected to the account of the Swiss intermediary MET Holding AG. The identity of its true beneficial owner remains a mystery.

Anastasia Krylenko, The Insider.
Translation: BIRD.BG

The text is from 2018, but we publish it due to its socio-political relevance.

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