“My name is Bence Szabó. I am a senior investigator with the Cybercrime Division of the National Bureau of Investigation, holding the rank of captain” – this is how the recording begins, which we made at the end of February while working on our article about the secret operation aimed at bringing down the Tisza Party, the opposition force leading in the polls in the run-up to the April 12 elections, and the investigation into the party’s IT specialists, conducted under pressure from the secret services.
This article was published on Tuesday, and in it we told the story in detail, based on documents and multiple confidential sources.
We reported that in July 2025, the National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) received a tip that two Hungarian men were suspected of child pornography. One of the secret service agencies, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (AH), specifically drew their attention to the report and pressured the police to conduct a search of the two individuals’ homes as quickly as possible.
During the search, investigators realized they had arrived at the homes of two IT specialists linked to the Tisza Party, thus finding themselves in the midst of a politically significant case. Dozens of data storage devices were seized, but no traces of child pornography were found on them.
The full recording may be viewed here (in Hungarian):
However, hundreds of screenshots of message exchanges were discovered, revealing details of an operation that appeared to be a political conspiracy. An operation aimed at hacking into the Tisza Party’s IT system and potentially bringing it down.
Following the publication of our article, police conducted a search at Bence Szabó’s workplace at the NNI and later at his apartment, Szabó’s lawyer, Adrienn Laczó, told Direkt36. Laczó said that authorities seized numerous data storage devices during the searches.
The search of Szabó’s apartment ended at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, after which he was questioned as a suspect at the Central Investigative Prosecutor’s Office on suspicion of abuse of office. According to Laczó, Szabó did not make a statement.
Szabó had recently submitted his resignation to the police, but at the time of yesterday’s operation, he was still serving in the police force, working out his notice period. According to Laczó, however, following Tuesday’s events, his employment status was expected to be terminated on Wednesday.
We recorded the interview with Szabó at the end of February, when he was still on the police force. In it, he described in detail what the story involving the Tisza Party looked like from the inside, from the perspective of the police officers involved in the case.
Szabó worked in the police department – the unit investigating child pornography crimes – where the report was received. This department carried out the house searches and the analysis of data downloaded from the devices, and they were also the ones under constant pressure from the AH regarding their work.
Szabó thus had a close-up view of what happened, and he recounts this in detail in the recording made by Direkt36. He describes the unusual intelligence agency interventions they experienced during their investigation. He discusses exactly how the recruitment operation against Tisza unfolded, during which unknown individuals tried to convince one of the IT specialists to help them compromise the party’s IT system.
Szabó said that he and his colleagues were convinced that the recruitment operation against Tisza was some kind of intelligence operation.
“Not many organizations in Hungary are capable of monitoring someone’s activities or accessing someone’s IT system,” said Szabó, adding that while they had no direct evidence, they suspected the AH was behind it.
“Of course, there was no clear evidence in this case that this was actually the work of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution or any other agency; only indirect indications that it had influenced the proceedings in this way, such as the request that the NBSZ, the National Security Service, carry out the data recovery. That’s when it also became clear to me that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had come to retrieve the data and took it from us—that is, from the investigative department—without any paperwork,” said Szabó.
At another point in the conversation, the detective stated that they did not have precise information about who had carried out the operation against Tisza, but even at higher-level meetings within the NNI, “it was hinted that there really is a special intelligence unit that operates under the direct personal control of a certain minister or state secretary.” He did not mention who these people might be.
Szabó also recounted that his superiors at the NNI did not allow the investigators to follow up on evidence regarding the operation against Tisza, nor did they allow the materials they had prepared to be included in the official case files. However, several of them decided that “we’ll conduct a sort of shadow investigation, so to speak, and properly follow through on the entire case.”
“We’ll prepare the necessary documents, partly to protect ourselves, so to speak, to show that we acted properly, and partly so that, God forbid, if they were to allow anything, we’d have everything ready and wouldn’t waste time on it,”
– said Szabó, adding that they had shared all the information gathered during their own investigation with their superiors.
In the interview, Szabó confirmed the information included in our article, according to which Evelin Vogel, Péter Magyar’s former girlfriend, was also a member of a team working against the party. The police officer also added that, according to information he obtained within the NNI, Vogel would go to an apartment in the 5th district to report, and received 5 million forints a month from certain individuals for that activity.
Vogel has now told Direkt36 that “none of these claims are true.”
We have also contacted the NNI and the AH regarding Szabó’s main claims. If they respond, we will update the article.
Szabó also explained what motivated him to go public.
“In an ideal system, I wouldn’t have to be sitting here. But I am sitting here, so it seems this is not an ideal system. It is unacceptable to me that not everyone is equal before the law. How is it possible that we suspect people who haven’t necessarily committed a crime, while we don’t even investigate people who have actually committed a crime—not just one, but multiple crimes?”
– said Szabó, referring to how the police were unable to investigate the unknown individuals working on the operation against Tisza because, under pressure from the AH, their superiors did not allow them to do so.
According to Szabó, it is obvious that a secret service group was behind the operation against Tisza. “How is it possible that a Hungarian intelligence agency would want to bring down a political party?” he asked.
He also said that he ultimately turned to the public because he felt there was no authority that would seriously address this matter. He stated that during police leadership meetings, “it has been said that prosecutor XY was dismissed because they refused to file charges” in certain cases.
“I know what oath I took when I was sworn in, and I want to uphold it: that I serve my country, not a certain group of people, such as a political party. And I see that this investigation was very much driven by party political interests. And I don’t think that’s right at all. That’s why I’m sitting here now in a less-than-ideal system,” Szabó said at the end of the conversation.
This article is part of a partnership between Telex and Hungarian investigative journalism center Direkt36.