The Special Service of Hungary monitored European officials on the territory of the country, searched their hotel rooms and recorded telephone conversations.
Politico writes about this, referring to a joint investigation by the Direkt36 center and the Belgian newspaper De Tijd.
Hungaryʼs Information Office, the Budapest equivalent of the CIA, is alleged to have been surveilling European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) investigators. At one time, they studied the activities of the company of the son-in-law of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban.
In the period from 2015 to 2017, when OLAF specialists worked in Hungary, their cars were tracked and their phones tapped, journalists say. The report added that Hungarian special services also searched the hotel rooms of EU delegations and downloaded data from their laptops.
In a comment to Politico, Orbánʼs representatives did not acknowledge the facts of the searches, calling it "fake news".
As the publication writes, Budapest has already been accused of hacking the phones of journalists, activists, and the opposition. In 2021, the countryʼs government announced the acquisition of Israeli spyware. At the beginning of 2024, a cyber attack was carried out on a member of the European Parliament who criticized Hungary.
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