A leader of an organized crime group from Budapest, Laszlo Kovacs, claims that in the 1990s he regularly transported money originating from the network of mobster Semion Moghilevich to high-ranking officials in Hungary, including the current Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The revelations appear in an investigation published by The Insider and target alleged connections between the underworld, police, and political financing during the post-communist transition period.
According to Kovacs, the funds would have come from the network coordinated by Semion Moghilevich, considered at that time one of the most influential leaders of organized crime in Eastern Europe.
The former mobster claims that the money was transferred in cash, and during the 1997 election campaign, the amounts would have reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, including a tranche of almost one million dollars intended, he asserts, for Viktor Orban.
Kovacs also claims that some of the money would have been directed towards the former head of the Hungarian police, Sandor Pinter, who became Minister of the Interior after Orban’s victory in the 1998 elections.
“I was bringing in money every week”
According to the cited publication, Kovacs says he entered the underworld of Budapest in 1994, after a conflict with Igor Korol’s men, the leader of one of the most powerful criminal groups in the Hungarian capital. Impressed by his reaction during the altercation, Korol would have proposed him to work for the organization, especially as a translator and courier.
He claims that he frequently went to Moghilevich’s luxurious residence in Budapest, from where he received packages of money that he would deliver to Pintér, in predetermined locations, usually in the city center.
“I would arrive at a designated place, get in a car, hand over the package, and get out at the next corner,” says Kovács, who claims that the amounts varied between 50,000 and 100,000 dollars.
According to this, the payments were intended to influence criminal investigations and to close sensitive cases related to assassinations and attacks that marked Budapest in the ’90s.
Details, HERE