I’m returning today to the attempted entrapment of Hungarian NGOs with the assistance of a private Israeli agency whose members are former Mossad operatives. I covered what we knew about the affair two days after Zsolt Bayer began a series of articles that was supposed to unmask the illicit activities of Soros-funded NGOs operating in Hungary.
In my post titled “In order to get George Soros, Orbán will go far—all the way to Jerusalem” I took a dim view of András Siewert’s decision to engage in conversation with a suspicious “businessman” who offered his charitable organization, Migration Aid, a “business proposition.” My position was that any contact, however innocent, can be twisted and used against not just Migration Aid but all NGOs that receive financial contributions from George Soros or any other foreign source.
I was not wrong in my reasoning because the sting, most likely initiated by the Hungarian government, perhaps with some help from the Israeli government, was used to “expose” the nefarious activities of foreign-funded NGOs. Assisting in this exposé was the propagandist Zsolt Bayer, who between March 19 and April 5 wrote seven articles about the “Soros Network” in Hungary, Germany, and Ukraine. Moreover, some of the information gleaned from this sting operation was even used by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who caused quite a stir by claiming that he has a running list of 2,000 Soros mercenaries in Hungary who are under surveillance.
And yet, in the final analysis, this sting operation may have some positive ramifications for NGOs. Most importantly, once a real investigative journalist began to dig, he discovered plenty about the modus operandi of the Orbán government. It became obvious that the government is willing to engage in absolutely unacceptable methods to blacken the names of those who don’t share its views and inhumane practices.
After the appearance of Bayer’s first articles that told the story of Siewert’s meeting with “Grigori Alexsandrov,” we knew that Siewert secretly took pictures of him and his female companion. Siewert also said that as soon as he was contacted by Alexsandrov he informed one of the many Hungarian secret services, although we were not told the details.
Today we not only learned the particulars but we also have a transcript of the information Siewert passed on to AVH (Alkotmányvédelmi Hivatal/Office of the Defense of the Constitution) on January 3. Moreover, AVH knew about Siewert’s trip to Vienna a few days later.
As Siewert indicated at his press conference, he and his friends were well prepared. They have about four hours’ worth of conversation, which contradicts the few lines Zsolt Bayer included in his second article. The offered bait was pretty feeble. Alexsandrov claimed to be the CEO of a company interested in a technological solution to easy data gathering, for example fingerprints, that later could be used to build a database. In addition to this lure, Alexsandrov tried to convince Siewert to become engaged in anti-government activities.
Since AVH knew about Siewert’s second trip to Vienna on February 12, if our suspicion is correct that the scheme was hatched somewhere near the prime minister’s office, the role of AVH, presumably working hand in hand with Migration Aid, is intriguing.
Zsolt Bayer pretended that the information he received came from “an investigative journalist,” but Alexsandrov was actually an employee of the Israeli agency. Migration Aid was just one of the company’s targets. Several operatives tried to entrap people in Vienna, New York, and Berlin. Alexsandrov also approached TASZ and the Helsinki Committee. And the Budapest office of the Open Society Foundation received an e-mail from “Maya Weiss,” who claimed to be an associate of a Berlin company called Finwaves.
The Israeli firm’s most successful operation took place in New York, where Pierre Remy (or whatever his name really is) approached Tracie Ahern, who was the financial officer of Soros Fund Management between 2008 and 2016. Remy, claiming to be a partner in a firm specializing in the organization of international conferences, said he wanted to talk to her about giving a lecture in Hong Kong. He insisted on meeting in person. The ensuing conversation, however, had nothing to do with the nonexistent conference. He was interested in Ahern’s former job with the Soros Fund. Remy and his accomplices made recordings and heavily edited the conversation. It was here that Ahern talked about George Soros’s activities in certain countries where he would like to influence the political climate. After a lot of prompting, Ahern guessed that there might have been at least 2,000 people working in Soros-funded NGOs in Hungary. One must keep in mind that Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundation are two entirely separate entities, and Ahern most likely had no idea about the reach of the foundation in Hungary or anywhere else.
In addition to approaching Migration Aid and Tracie Ahern, the agency also got in touch with Yevhen Bystrytsky, executive director of the International Renaissance Foundation of Ukraine, an Open Society organization. Bystrytsky is an important public figure who just recently received the Order of Freedom, the highest state order of Ukraine. He was approached by someone who called himself Novak, who turned out to be our Alexsandrov, who also recorded their conversation. He was mostly interested in how Soros put his own men into the various ministries.
A few days later “Ali Mahmud Al-Rabi” got in touch with Balázs Dénes, the head of the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, in Berlin. A meeting was organized in Amsterdam, and their conversation was also recorded. Dénes talked about calling the attention of some German government officials to the Hungarian government’s pressure on civic groups. His words were twisted to give the impression that he had in fact tried to convince German companies not to invest in Hungary. This recording was first revealed in The Jerusalem Post. The others ended up in Zsolt Bayer’s office.
None of these people was suspicious enough to report the visits of these strangers, who were asking pointed questions about George Soros, financing activities, and political views to the authorities. It was only András Siewert who had the smarts to do so, and thanks to him and the investigative journalist at Index, the operatives and methods of the Israeli firm have been uncovered.
The story will continue tomorrow.
