Three handwritten, signed reports attributed to a young Viktor Orbán described fellow conscripts’ conduct and their political, sexual, and religious orientation during his military service in Zalaegerszeg, according to former Prime Minister Miklós Németh. He made the claim in a statement that investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi first described in a podcast and published on 5 November.
For 16 years, until May, Orbán ran Hungary as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most reliable ally in the EU, and US President Donald Trump publicly endorsed him. As Russia waged its war on Ukraine, his government vetoed EU sanctions on Russia and blocked a €90 billion EU loan to Kyiv.
The account surfaced as Hungary opened its communist-era secret police files to the public. It also comes as the Trump administration is backing Orbán for UN secretary-general, according to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Németh’s statement now sits in the state security archive, but it is testimony, not the reports themselves.
Németh says he could not verify the papers
Németh wrote that Defense Minister Ferenc Kárpáti showed him the reports in March 1990, shortly before Hungary’s first free election. He could not check who wrote them, or whether the handwriting and signature were genuine, though he believed he recognized them. He returned the papers to Kárpáti and kept no copies.
Years later, a few months before Kárpáti died in 2013, Németh asked him what had become of the documents. Kárpáti said they were with Géza Stefán, the longtime head of the Military Security Office, which succeeded communist military counterintelligence. According to Panyi, Stefán had been trained by the KGB in Moscow and hoarded compromising files on Hungary’s elite. Those files vanished from his safe the day after he died in 2009, and Panyi wrote that the alleged Orbán reports could have been among them.
Orbán says he was the target, not the informer
A day after the podcast, on 3 November, Orbán posted more than 20 pages of state security files on Facebook. He said authorities had tried to recruit him during his military service, that he refused, and that he and his wife were later wiretapped. Hungarian weekly hvg noted that he had published the same files in 2005 and 2012. Earlier, when Panyi asked for comment, Orbán’s spokesman Bertalan Havasi called the claims “FAKE NEWS.”
Meanwhile, Hungarian outlet Contextus cited an archive card that lists Orbán from October 1981 as a “social contact” of military counterintelligence in Zalaegerszeg. Under military counterintelligence rules, Contextus noted, such contacts signed no recruitment pledge and filed no written reports, which does not fit handwritten, signed reports.
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Németh waited for a new disclosure law
Németh was vice president of the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1991–2000. In a 2020 interview, he said he had signed a declaration not to comment on Hungarian politics while he worked at the bank. Panyi says this explains Németh’s silence in the 1990s. In March this year, Németh deposited his statement with a lawyer. Then, in September, he handed it to the State Security Archive, after parliament widened access to the files under the new government that took office in May. Historian János M. Rainer, who heads the new review committee, attended the handover, according to Hungarian outlet Telex.
Hungary’s online database of communist-era secret police files opened on 4 November, as Reuters reported it would. Panyi wrote that it names roughly 50,000–60,000 people, with more recruitment files due by 25 February 2027.
