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Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion
Kremlin Hackers Take Aim at the Swiss Lab That’s Working the Skirpal Poisoning Case
The group that attacked Ukraine’s power grid is phishing a chemical-weapons lab critical to the Skripal case.
A state-backed Russian hacking group has is targeting a Swiss laboratory that’s helping investigators solve the March poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in London.
Called Sandworm, the group has been trying to phish employees of Switzerland’s Spiez Laboratory, a chemical-and biological-weapons facility that is doing forensics work on the Novichok poisoning of the former Russian colonel and double agent, according to Swiss news outlet Sonntags Blick, which reported the attacks on Sunday.
Russia has denied any involvement in Skripal’s poisoning.
Sandworm isn’t as well known as the Russian intelligence (FSB) and military (GRU) entities that stole emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016, but it has run similar operations. In 2013, the group sent malicious emails to NATO officials and to a Polish energy concern. In 2014, they went after various Eastern European officials working in governments that are critical of Russia, using a version of the BlackEnergy botnet tool originally developed by Russian programmer Oleksiuk Dmytro.
“They’re not going after credentials. They want knowledge that only a few people can use. That’s security-related information and diplomatic information and intelligence on NATO and Ukraine and Poland,” FireEye’s John Hultquist toldWIRED in 2014.
In 2015, Sandworm made history with the first successful attack on a power grid, using a version of BlackEnergy to hit the Ukrainian energy sector. The group struck again in December 2016, disrupting power to as many as 200,000 Ukrainians in the dead of winter.
Sandworm’s recent attack on Spiez was subtler, a return to the highly directed phishing attacks they ran in 2013 and 2014. Impersonating members of the lab’s management, they sent an email inviting researchers to a chemical weapons conference — and encouraging them to click on a malware-laden Word attachment.
Kurt Münger of the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection told Blick that authorities had not seen any data theft resulting from the attempt.
*** Meanwhile:
Increasingly alarmed at foreign hacking, DOD and intelligence officials are racing to educate the military and defense contractors.
Officials have begun circulating a “Do Not Buy” list of software that does not meet “national security standards,” Ellen Lord, defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, said Friday.
“We had specific issues … that caused us to focus on this,” Lord told reporters at the Pentagon.
“What we are doing is making sure that we do not buy software that’s Russian or Chinese provenance,” she said. “Quite often that’s difficult to tell at at first glance because of holding companies.”
The Pentagon started compiling the list about six months ago. Suspicious companies are put on a list that is circulated to the military’s software buyers. Now the Pentagon is working with the three major defense industry trade associations — the Aerospace industries Association, National Defense Industrial Association and Professional Services Council — to alert contractors small and large.
Frankly, Britain has a much worse issue, but big hat tip to Senator Rubio. There are cities in America which are pockets of some nasty dark money in real estate.
There needs to be some real reform to CFIUS, Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States.
Crackdown on dirty money shook Miami real estate. Now, Rubio wants to take it national
Washington– In a move with significant implications for the U.S. housing market, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is seeking to take a Treasury Department crackdown on dirty money in luxury real estate and expand it from a few high-priced enclaves to the entire nation.
Rubio says his proposal is an attempt to root out criminals who use illicit funds and anonymous shell companies to buy homes — a form of money laundering that hides the cash’s tainted origin from law enforcement and banks. The widespread practice enables terrorism, sex trafficking, corruption, and drug dealing by providing an outlet for dirty cash, according to transparency advocates.
Through an amendment to an unrelated major spending bill, Rubio will ask Treasury to study whether government regulators should force shell companies that buy homes priced at $300,000 or more in cash nationwide to disclose their owners. That could be a figure as high as 10 percent of the nation’s real-estate deals.
A similar reporting requirement affecting transactions priced at $1 million or more has already had a chilling effect on all-cash corporatesales in Miami-Dade County, which has been under Treasury’s microscope since 2016.
“Shell companies involved in shady activities are a big problem, especially throughout South Florida,” Rubio said in a statement to McClatchy and the Miami Herald. “With this provision, a study would be conducted to look at requiring all shell companies that make cash transactions, regardless of their area, to disclose their identities.”
The amendment builds on a previous Treasury disclosure order that applied only to certain markets, including South Florida.
That order — which forced shell companies buying homes with cash to reveal their true owners to the government — has been in place in some areas since March 2016 at various price points. Its effects were immediate and stunning. As soon as the order took hold, shell companies buying homes with cash dropped off the map, a recent study by academic economists found. In Miami-Dade, the number of corporate cash sales plummeted 95 percent, although a strong overall market suggests creative buyers found ways to circumvent the rules, researchers said.
Before the crackdown, corporate cash sales accounted for roughly a third of home-sale volume in Miami-Dade, which is popular with foreign investors.
The amendment has the support of the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Oregon’s Ron Wyden, as well as Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Both have tried to widen disclosure of true owners of shell companies, which can be listed in the names of lawyers, accountants, and other fronts. The lack of corporate transparency frustrates law-enforcement officials, who say it stymies their investigations.
A vote is expected on the overall bill as soon as this week, Rubio’s office said.
The powerful real-estate industry has fought attempts from the government to have it act as a watchdog against money laundering, as banks, precious-metals dealers, money-service businesses, and other financial institutions are required to do. Many Realtors and developers say their clients are simply wealthy buyers seeking privacy, not criminals.
But over the past two years, Treasury has moved with force into what had been a largely unregulated sector of the U.S. financial system. Starting in Miami-Dade County and Manhattan two years ago, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) began requiring anonymous shell companies to disclose their true owners when they bought pricey homes with cash.
The temporary directives — called “geographic targeting orders” or GTOs — were later expanded to other housing markets in Florida, New York, Texas, California, and Hawaii where foreign and anonymous investors are gobbling up real estate and driving up prices. The rules require title agents to identify the owners of shell companies buying homes with cash and disclose their names to the federal government.
“The GTOs are working, and it’s time they were expanded. Laundering money through real estate isn’t new, but [what is new is] an effective approach to combat dirty money,” said Clark Gascoigne, deputy director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, a watchdog nonprofit.
Rubio’s proposal to take the project national, Gascoigne added, “sends a strong message that we’re serious about protecting the U.S. financial system, the real-estate market, and communities across the country.”
Stephen Hudak, a spokesman for FinCEN, declined to comment.
Cracking down
The Rubio amendment asks Treasury to consider expanding the FinCEN directive to include all cash real-estate transactions over $300,000 anywhere in the United States.
It would give Treasury 180 days to submit a study to Congress providing details about the data that has been collected by FinCEN since 2016 and how it is being used. The agency is also being asked to determine if it needs more authority to combat money laundering and whether expanding the targeting order would be of use. In addition, FinCEN is asked if a registry of company owners — something supported by a bipartisan cast of federal legislators — would help authorities fight money laundering, tax evasion, election fraud, and other illegal activities.
Previously, the FinCEN disclosure requirement kicked in for corporate cash sales that were priced at $3 million or higher in New York City, $1 million or higher in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, and at different price points in other states. In May, FinCEN enacted a new directive that secretly lowered the number to $300,000 in all GTO areas. Sources familiar with the agency’s thinking say the new order was kept confidential because regulators don’t want to give money launderers a road map for structuring their transactions to avoid reporting.
Rubio’s amendment would start at that lower price point, covering a major chunk of home sales nationwide. Last year, the median U.S. home sold for a price of $247,200, according to the National Association of Realtors.
A cash transaction is one in which there is no mortgage and the property is purchased outright. Cash doesn’t just mean stacks of greenbacks; it also includes such financial instruments as wire transfers, checks, and money orders. Unlike mortgages, cash deals don’t involve heavy scrutiny from banks, which can identify potential money laundering and file suspicious-activity reports to the feds.
“There’s hardly a metropolitan area in the country that is not experiencing a real public-policy issue regarding affordable housing,” said Ned Murray, a housing expert and associate director of Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center. “The whole focus of the real-estate industry is on … supplying homes for wealthy investors that we don’t know much about. It really is a factor for prices and supply.”
Much of the world has responded to the threat of corruption in real estate by requiring greater ownership disclosure. The United States has done relatively less, although Rubio’s amendment could help close the gap.
Those operating in the shadows of the real-estate market certainly seem aware of the Treasury disclosure requirements — and are working to get around them.
When Urdaneta prepared to close on a brand-new, $5.3 million condo at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, he was informed by paperwork from the developer that “taking title [to the unit] under a company or trust may trigger FinCEN reporting requirements,” according to a federal indictment filed last week. He was worried enough about the disclosure that he discussed how to avoid it with a government informant.
Ultimately, Urdaneta set up a company in his wife’s name to do the deal, prosecutors allege.
Developer Gil Dezer’s company built the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, where units sell for millions of dollars to wealthy out-of-towners.
Dezer Development did not say why it alerts potential buyers that they might end up on Treasury’s radar.
“All language relating to legal requirements associated with closings was prepared by Dezer Development’s outside legal counsel,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email to the Herald on Monday.
While overall home sales held steady even after the FinCEN rule went into place, the real-estate study found, luxury home prices were slightly softer in markets affected by the GTO.
That suggests that expanding the GTO could have a dampening effect on the nation’s real-estate market, said Jeff Morr, a luxury real-estate broker at Douglas Elliman and chairman of the Miami Master Brokers Forum, an industry group.
“Does it stop money laundering? Probably, yes,” Morr said. “Is it good for the real-estate market? Probably, no.”
But at least making the rule nationwide might take some of the heat off Miami, he said.
“It may make Florida less unattractive now that it’s everywhere,” Morr said. “We shouldn’t be treated differently than other areas.”
The crane has become the unofficial city bird of Miami during the latest construction boom.
Miami Herald
That was exactly the sentiment of the Miami-Dade County Commission when the rule was first enacted in 2016. At the time, commissioners passed a symbolic resolution asking regulators to stop singling out Miami for special scrutiny. The industry still feels the same way.
Legitimate buyers need privacy, too, said Ron Shuffield, president and CEO of EWM Realty International.
“There are wealthy people who don’t want everyone to know that they live at the end of the block,” Shuffield said. “If someone is determined to launder money, they can pick anywhere in the country to do it, from the smallest city in the Midwest to Miami or New York City. It’s only fair that every area have to report. Otherwise, the rules could be scaring people away from certain markets.”
The families of political dissidents who were forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially killed in Ahvaz, southern Iran, in the 1980s are suffering untold mental anguish and distress as the authorities are destroying the individual and mass graves of their loved ones. They are afraid of facing further persecution if they speak out.
***
Amnesty International reports that Iran’s regime is destroying a mass grave of the victims of the 1988 massacre. According to estimates from the opposition, these victims number in the 10s of 1000s (the vast majority from the MEK).
Addressing followers in the ancient city of Hamedan (a location probably chosen as a metaphor of Iranian durability), Qassem Soleimani warned Americans, “We are closer to you than what you think. You should know that I am your foe. The Quds Force alone and not all the Armed Forces is enough to be your rival. You are aware of Iran’s power in asymmetric war.”
Soleimani means for his words to be taken as references to terrorist attacks. In specific terms, IRGC modus operandi and tactical capability render “closer to you than what you think” and “asymmetric war” as references to Quds force attack cells and cyber-strike teams in the U.S. homeland, South America, and Europe.
But Soleimani wasn’t done there.
Again emphasizing “We are so close to you in places that you might not even think of,” Soleimani declared “You should know that there is not even a single night that we don’t think of destroying you.” Soleimani also drew a sharp reference to his role subjecting U.S. forces in Iraq to explosively formed penetrator attacks, stating “”have you forgotten when you had provided adult-size diapers for your battle tank crews?” EFP attacks killed hundreds of Americans and wounded many more.
Soleimani loved the EFPs for their brutality. In David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers, we hear about U.S. Army Specialist Joshua Reeves, whose vehicle was hit by an EFP in Baghdad. Reeves “wasn’t breathing, his eyes weren’t moving, his left foot was gone, his backside was ripped open, his stomach was filling with blood …” Reeves died the same day that his wife had told him that she had given birth.
And in a reference to Iranian martyrdom ideology, deeply vested in the revolution’s theological appropriation of the Battle of Karbala, Soleimani concluded, “We are thirsty for martyrdom and annihilation of arrogant powers.”
He wants the U.S. to know the IRGC will proudly die for their cause.
The U.S. may now have to help them on that course, because the U.S. must respond deliberately to this speech.
First off, President Trump should recognize that the Iranians aren’t playing around here. Soleimani has the pedigree to render very bloody terrorist attacks into action. He also has no qualms about massacring U.S. civilians (the Quds force nearly blew up a Washington, D.C., restaurant in 2011) and recently tried to blow up a Paris conference attended by U.S. officials. Indeed, Soleimani’s words exemplify why we argued this week that Trump must be more focused in his red-line warnings to Iran.
But what specifically should be done?
Both Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo should take the lead in warning that any terrorist attacks on the U.S. will result in two immediate effects.
First, aggressive U.S. military strikes on IRGC infrastructure belonging to the Quds force and the IRGC at large. Pompeo’s role is important here because the former CIA director took a tough line against the IRGC, and Soleimani knows he means business.
Second, the U.S. should make clear that Soleimani and his senior leadership figures will be personally targeted. While some, like former Obama administration official Tommy Vietor, believe such threats would be outrageous, it is important that the Iranian hardliners know any terrorist attacks will not meet a standard fare response. They must know that the U.S. will metaphorically gut them if they come for our citizens. If Soleimani and his cadre do not understand that U.S. deterrent posture, they will kill innocent Americans. Evidencing their willingness to up the ante, the Quds Force directed Houthi rebel forces in Yemen to target cargo vessels passing through the Red Sea on Wednesday.
But the Trump administration should also be clear about where this is heading. As it attempts to destabilize the Iranian regime with economic pressure, the Iranian regime is showing that it will not go down without a fight.
Ultimately, Qassem Soleimani’s threats should be taken very seriously. He is a skilled commander with significant terrorist capabilities and an ideologically vested hatred for America. He must be dealt with as such.
Senators Cruz and Rubio have been sounding the alarms on the Confucius Institution that has found homes on U.S. college campuses. They have both done the same with regard to the Chinese Students Association.
Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Taiwan and New Zealand are sounding the same warnings.
Xi Jinping’s rule to date has been characterised by, among other things, a return to the basics of Party rule as established by Mao. These include a renewed emphasis on United Front 统战 work, which Mao called one of the ‘three secret weapons’ 三个大法宝 (along with the armed forces and Party-building) that helped the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to power in 1949. (For an overview of the United Front, see the China Story Yearbook 2014: Shared Destiny, pp.128–132.) The year 2015 was the most important one since 1990 for the United Front, a collection of strategies overseen by the United Front Work Department (UFWD) 统战部 by which the Party seeks to strengthen its authority and legitimacy, especially among the more marginalised, independent, and minority sectors of the Chinese population.
The United Front Work Department of the CCP is an integral part of the Party structure, down to sometimes the lowest levels and coordinated at the very top by a United Front Leading Small Group initiated by Xi Jinping. The Department works to reach out, represent, and guide key individuals and groups within both the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and greater China, including Chinese diasporas. The goals include to have all such groups accept CCP rule, endorse its legitimacy, and help achieve key Party aims. Because United Front Work has officially been extended to those who emigrated after 1979 as well as those Chinese studying abroad, some 50 million or more, United Front Work is now of direct relevance and sometimes concern to an increasing number of foreign governments, notably Australia, Zealand, Canada and the United States. United Front Work abroad is not limited to only these countries though.
How does the United Front Work fashion China’s image and influence overseas?
An important role of United Front Work since Xi Jinping became CCP general secretary in 2012 has been to help tell the CCP’s preferred “China story” by encouraging overseas Chinese of all sorts to become active promoters of the Party-state’s views in their own domiciles. This promotion includes using material from China in publications, forming associations to highlight positions on issues like Taiwan or more recently, the One Belt, One Road policy, meeting local politicians and winning them over, and using the status of voters in democracies to influence domestic policies in ways that promote CCP interests.
The promotion of Confucius Institutes to win greater influence over what and how Chinese is taught has been yet another success story, particularly in the developing world where this initiative allows Party-state views much more leeway.
Encouraging all of sorts of influential foreigners to visit China under supervision has also been a very successful tactic. Such visitors are treated lavishly and often come to modify their positions or end up airing official Chinese positions despite themselves. Even retired politicians are seen as valuable because of their institutional knowledge and the assumption, usually valid, that they can still wield significant influence in their party or more broadly.
Explain the function of CCP propaganda machinery in Chinese foreign policy.
The current CCP propaganda push abroad can be summed up as helping ‘make the international environment safe for achieving the Party-state’s goals’ and shifting the terms of discussion of China to ones that the CCP prefers. Even forcing or achieving small shifts in language can be very significant.
The recent attacks on Marriott Hotels and foreign airlines for using terms such as Taiwan and thus treating Taiwan as an independent country have been rewarded with immediate backtracking by the companies concerned. The result of these efforts is to help isolate and delegitimize Taiwan’s status in the eyes of foreign publics. Note that these effects are the opposite of how the CCP uses United Front Work and propaganda in regards to itself, but isolation and delegitimization or at least neutralization of real and perceived enemies are important goals of both. The success of these efforts would be to reduce the costs of other actions intended to bring Taiwan under PRC sovereignty, such as boycotts, blockades, or even invasion.
The CCP would emphasize any such actions as merely “internal” affairs. This “legitimacy” would be repeated by innumerable Chinese diaspora groups around the world, not least by the Associations for the Peaceful Reunification of China – run out of Beijing but now spread worldwide. Even the translation from Chinese of tongyi or “unification” as “reunification” is an effective almost subliminal technique of reframing the issue in the CCP’s favor. Another salient example of the success of these techniques is how foreign news organizations and broadcasters now often feel the need to add a rider to any discussions of Taiwan, adding, “which China regards as a renegade province.” It might be true at one level, but is deeply wrong and misleading at another.
Why are Chinese influence efforts increasingly under government scrutiny in Australia?
The CCP’s United Front Work and stepped up propaganda activities in Australia have been only belatedly recognized as potentially dangerous at a number of levels. These include the emergence of a new group of wealthy Chinese who, having made their fortunes in China, were seeking political access and influence in Australia. The major problem has been with the sometimes very strong United Front links of such people and hence the motives of their actions were called into question. The influence of some of these people on Chinese media in Australia, now almost overwhelmingly pro-Beijing, was another worry as it left only a few independent voices speaking directly to Chinese communities in Chinese and promoting values not in line with Beijing’s.
Another concern has been around fears of stepped up activities and surveillance of Chinese students on Australian campuses. This followed the formalization of PRC students abroad as a specific united front work target in 2015 and a number of well publicized incidents where Chinese students had confronted lecturers about, for example, treating Taiwan as a country.
While much of this work with students and post graduates is likely aimed at surveillance to ascertain whether students are being attracted to Western ideals and values, Christianity, or Falun Gong, the potential clearly exists to push universities or teachers to tone down or omit courses which teach things the CCP regards as dangerous or subversive. Similarly, there are recurrent concerns that the Confucius Institutes on university campuses may pose dangers to academic freedom and promote pro-Beijing lines.
Perhaps the latest and largely unspoken concern relates to a growing realization that the dramatic increases in Chinese emigration to places like Australia and New Zealand etc., particularly since the 2000s, have given rise to large groups of citizens with voting power and sometimes able to sway even general elections, who often remain largely under the sway of the PRC Party-state via its propaganda and United Front Work. Having left China as beneficiaries of the reform period, these groups have no reason to oppose it and many good reasons to support it even if they had no vote there. This is very different, for example, from those who migrated or fled in the wake of the brutal suppression of the student movement of 1989. Moreover, these new migrants are often highly educated and economically successful, unlike many of the generations of Chinese before them, and hence much more able and likely to demand commensurate influence more or less immediately. There is no need for a transitional generation to build up such social, political, and economic capital. This unforeseen consequence of business and student migration is only now becoming obvious to local politicians but how to respond is unclear.
Primer: The Jobbik Party is/was a movement for a better Hungary. It is the strongest ‘right-wing’ party in Europe. (Right-wing in Europe is not so much what it is the United States)
Bela Kovacs is an agent of influence…those Russian agents are everywhere….
Moscow’s Man in Europe’s Parliament on Trial as a Spy
The espionage trial of Bela Kovacs is another milestone in the expanding influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
BUDAPEST — While counter-intelligence agencies hunt Russian spies and agents of influence around the United States and Europe, the Kremlin-friendly government of Hungarian nationalist Viktor Orban could let an alleged Moscow spy off the hook.
Although Hungary is a member of the European Union, Orban has been accused by E.U. parliamentarians of a “systemic threat to democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights in Hungary.” And it’s against that backdrop that this espionage trial, potentially another milestone in the expanding influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is taking place here in the Hungarian capital.
The accused is himself a member of the European Parliament: Bela Kovacs, 58, sometimes known derisively as “KGBela,” comes from the extremist Jobbik party, often accused of anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi tendencies. He is alleged to have worked for the Russian intelligence service for more than eight years, providing the Kremlin with secret information about the E.U.’s agendas regarding business, energy and politics.
Kovacs, a thin-lipped Moscow-educated Hungarian politician, is known for the way he uses crusader-style rhetoric to rouse meetings and protests organized by his far-right group in the E.U. parliament, the Alliance of European National Movements (AENM).
Meanwhile Bela has traveled around Russia and Russian-annexed Crimea, as well Abkhazia and Donbas, where Russia backs separatist movements that have torn away portions of the Republic of Georgia and Ukraine. His role, speaking both Russian and English, was to observe and praise the Kremlin’s “clean and well-ordered” election campaigns in those places, even as independent observers denounced coercion, subterfuges and fraud.
“The European Union is suffocating; if we do not turn to the east in time, we’ll have no other place to go,” he told the Russian popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2014. “So, Mother Russia, you will be saving Europe again.”
“He has been an effective agent of influence for Putin,” says Peter Kreko, director of a Budapest think tank, the Political Capital Institute. “[Kovacs] is the ideologist of the Alliance of European National Movements, a far-right party in the European Parliament that has been lobbying for the Kremlin’s policies.” But Kovacs appeared to be perfectly open about his role and his beliefs.
Espionage is another matter. He has been accused in court of handing over to the GRU, Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, information about the European Union’s energy policies, investigations, and internal discussions related to Russian issues, including oil and gas prices, pipelines, and the E.U.’s visa policy for Russian citizens.
The counts against Bela could earn him eight years in prison — but the chances of that happening are regarded as slim, since the agenda of Orban’s Fidesz party has come to include many of Jobbik’s positions, and Orban’s views would appear rather close to those of Kovacs’.
The biggest danger for KGBela, in a country where the independence of the judiciary is highly compromised, is that Orban will allow him to be convicted to appease other interests.
The allegations against Kovacs first surfaced more than four years ago, when members of the Hungarian parliamentary committee leaked a potentially damning bit of news to the press: there was “solid” evidence, they said, that their Hungarian colleague, MEP Bela Kovacs, had held secret meetings with Russian intelligence.
The European Parliament lifted Kovacs’ immunity from prosecution in 2015, but the far-right politician continues to serve, and enjoys access to sensitive materials.
“My client is not worried, he feels like he’s fine,” said Kovacs’ attorney, Istvan Szikinger. “He not only still works for the European Parliament, he gets assigned to travel on important missions to Tajikistan, Abkhazia, Russia and other countries. If he was not trustworthy, the European Parliament would have not trusted him.”
Kovacs will appear in court in September. “I have no doubt that the espionage accusations against him will prove wrong,” Szikinger said.
Meanwhile, unlike the jailed Maria Butina, an alleged Russian spy accused of working through the National Rifle Association to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Bela Kovacs is walking around free here in Budapest.
For years, Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi and his colleagues at Index.hu, one of the most influential news portals in Hungary, have been collecting evidence to support the case against “KGBela,” and the narrative has become so compelling that they and their readers certainly would be disappointed to see him escape justice.
The story also has aspects that are plainly bizarre. An Index.hu report in 2014 published details about Kovacs’ Russian wife Svetlana Istoshina, claiming to discover her “parallel marriages, secret Japanese and Austrian husbands and mysterious trips.” It alleged that “the Russian secret service was one of the bonds holding the family in one piece.” The article concluded that “the politician has been known to the KGB almost from the day he was born and in the 1980s the organization recruited him through his wife. His political career starting in the early 2000s must also have benefited the Russians.” (The Daily Beast has asked Svetlana Istoshina, who is based in Budapest, for an interview. She did not respond.)
“I am convinced that Bela Kovacs is a GRU agent of influence—a non-charismatic and clumsy agent,” Panyi told The Daily Beast.
Panyi blames Hungarian authorities for botching the prosecution on purpose.
“Hungarian prosecutors intentionally fucked up the investigation,” says Panyi. “They should have caught Kovacs while he was having a meeting with Russian intelligence; but now, when all the case’s materials have been leaked to a pro-Viktor Orban newspaper, Bela Kovacs has had an opportunity to destroy all the evidence. The chance to punish him has been lost.”
Kovacs’ attorney, Szikinger, tells The Daily Beast that prosecutors do have audio recordings of Kovac’ meetings with Russian officials: “Both I and Kovacs have been insisting on making the tapes public, since there is nothing in them, Kovacs was meeting with Russian diplomats and not the intelligence.”
“Many of my colleagues wonder why the leadership put Bela Kovacs on trial,” says Szikinger. The attorney believes that his client’s case is highly political, that precisely because the ruling party of Hungary, Fidesz, has a far-right, anti-immigrant and pro-Russian agenda like Jobbik’s, Kovacs is a target.
Hungary’s independent analysts struggle to define Orban’s strategy for the Kovacs trial. “Orban tries to improve his relations with United States, so right after Helsinki summit, Orban said that the threat to Europe is coming from the South, the migration terrorism and also from the east and this is Russia,” Kreko told The Daily Beast. “The irony here is that just a few days before, Orban was sending a message to NATO that they should have good relationships with Russia; by putting Kovacs on the bench he is trying to prove to the E.U. and the U.S. that Hungary is not the servant of Putin.”
Since the war in Georgia in 2008, Europe has been facing an existential choice of saving peace or moving to a severe punishment for Russia. And since the U.S. intelligence agencies accused Russia of a concerted attack on American democratic institutions during the 2016 presidential campaign that put Donald Trump in office, scrutiny has grown even more intense.
International institutions, it is clear, are now much more concerned about Russian spies than they used to be. Earlier this week The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission expressed concerns about a spy among the organization’s staff passing secret documents to Russian intelligence service. A former European diplomat told The Daily Beast on Sunday that the OSCE suspected an individual from the Russian Embassy in Ukraine, seconded to the OSCE mission for several months: “In this day and age no organization expects to be safe from infiltration, cyber attacks, manipulation,” the diplomat said.
Kovacs’s court case is one more test not only for Hungary but for the entire European Union: will it stay independent or, as Kovacs once predicted, will it be “saved” by Mother Russia?
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