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Feud between Hungarian PM, oligarch deepens with informant charge

Published 09/03/2015, 13:13
© Reuters. Hungarian Prime Minister Orban gestures during his annual state-of-the-nation speech in Budapest

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - A personal feud between Prime Minister Viktor Orban and a media mogul has taken a new twist after the former friend accused the Hungarian leader of informing on him to the secret police during the communist era.

Lajos Simicska, a leading oligarch who played a key role in Orban's rise to power, said on Sunday the prime minister's growing ties with Moscow raised doubts about his assurances that he was not a regular informant in the 1980s.

Orban was a prominent democracy activist in the final phase of Hungarian communism, which collapsed in late 1989, and says he was not an active informer, even though the secret police approached him during his army service.

Late on Sunday, Simicska said Orban gave the secret police some information on him. He also said Orban told him later in the 1980s that the secret police had tried to enlist him and he refused.

"I believed him for 30 years that this is how it happened. But today I no longer know what to think," Simicska, a high school friend of Orban's, told the website Mandiner.hu.

In an interview on ATV television, he repeated the allegations and said the recent warming of relations between the Orban government and Moscow had made him uncertain.

Orban dismissed Simicska's statements on Monday, putting them down to "wounded feelings". The oligarch broke publicly with the prime minister last month, accusing him of trying to shut down independent media such as his news conglomerate.

"I don't see any point in making such a circus of Hungarian politics, and therefore I do not see any point in participating in these debates beyond the point of making facts clear," Orban told reporters after a speech at the foreign ministry.

Actual or imputed collaboration with the secret police has haunted politics in post-communist Eastern Europe. The secret archives still fascinate Hungarians because Budapest, unlike some other ex-communist states, has not opened up all its files to the public.

Simicska told the Mandiner website he knew several people had informed on him by his early 20s. A friend told him that he had to report on him to the secret police.

"I told this person not to worry, it was good that he told me about it and we would figure out together what he should write," he said, confirming it was Orban.

© Reuters. Hungarian Prime Minister Orban gestures during his annual state-of-the-nation speech in Budapest

Orban has said the secret services had spied on him and also on his wife.

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