Just a few years after launching in 2020, Megafon Digital Incubator Center had become one of Hungary’s most influential political advertising agencies, mainly running social media campaigns in support of the ruling party and its leader, Viktor Orbán.
But Megafon appears to have lost its sense of purpose since Orbán was swept from power in national elections this past April. Four months after that stunning loss, its website was taken offline.
Now, internal documents from a firm called V-Híd Zrt reveal the source of much of Megafon’s income. Around $12 million in donations came from that company, which is owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, Orbán’s childhood friend.
Mészáros became fabulously wealthy during Orbán’s 16 years in power, building a business empire spanning sectors from construction to banking and energy. Mészáros’ companies won seven percent of all public procurement contracts — together worth about $2 billion — between 2018 and 2020 alone, according to Transparency International.
József Péter Martin, executive director of Transparency International’s Hungarian chapter, said the relationship between Megafon and Mészáros illustrates how Orbán and his Fidesz party relied on affluent elites and friendly media — and how those allies benefited in turn.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” Martin told OCCRP’s member center, Direkt36.
“Mészáros’s company wins the public procurement contract and gets rich as a result. He uses that money to fund a private company that works to keep Fidesz in power by spreading propaganda,” he said.
Research groups like the Rule of Law Lab at New York University have documented in detail how Orbán and Fidesz co-opted the media to maintain power.
Public broadcasters became government mouthpieces, while there was a “consolidation of private outlets under allied ownership,” the Rule of Law Lab said in a report early this year. Eventually, the report noted, Mészáros “became Hungary’s largest media owner.”
Mészáros did not own Megafon, but his company’s money was key to its operations, according to the documents obtained by Direkt36. They show that payments from V-Híd amounted to one third of Megafon’s total revenue from 2022 to 2024. The funding grew year-by-year, accounting for more than half of Megafon’s entire income in 2024.
The payments from V-Híd were referenced in the documents as “donations.”
Neither V-Híd nor Megafon responded to requests for comment. Mészáros did not respond to requests for comment.
Communications included among the documents show a cordial relationship between the two companies. In one February 2023 exchange, Megafon’s founder, István Kovács, wrote to V-Híd to express gratitude for the donations his company had received — and to say the company was open to more funding.
“On behalf of the entire Megafon team, I would like to once again thank you for your previous support,” Kovács wrote in an email.
A week later, a V-Híd executive issued an internal order: “Please transfer the 500 million to Megafon now!”
That amount — worth about $1.4 million at the time — was sent by V-Híd the same day, according to a transfer receipt included in the documents. In July 2023, V-Híd made another transfer of about $1 million.
Funds from V-Híd helped Megafon pump out a steady stream of pro-Fidesz messages on social media. These included videos posted before the 2024 municipal elections accusing the opposition of trying to drag Hungary into war by supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Megafon kept campaigning in the run-up to the vote this year, organizing an event featuring Orbán, and posting pro-Fidesz messages on social media.
But the advertising agency’s fortunes were about to change.
After winning elections in April, Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar pledged to stop state advertising being funneled into pro-Fidesz media — including almost 500 outlets that had been consolidated as part of the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA).
Some outlets reportedly stopped publishing and others downsized, including Mediaworks, which was owned by Mészáros and folded into KESMA. Mediaworks announced in mid-June that it would undertake a restructuring process that would involve “changes in staff numbers.”
Megafon appears to have suffered a similar fate. A document from a company that provides Hungarian business intelligence and commercial registry data shows that the Megafon had 72 employees in April. By August, the company was down to three staff members, and its website was taken offline.
