A Catalogue of Lies: Peter Magyar Has Lied His Way Through the Past Year and a Half

The leader of the Tisza Party has made countless false statements since entering the political scene. He started his political career with a lie, claiming that he had no intention of entering politics. Later, he lied about wanting to abolish politicians' immunity, and also denied that he had wiretapped his ex-wife, Judit Varga. The most dangerous lie he told was the claim that the plane of the ousted Syrian president had landed in Budapest. Most recently, Peter Magyar made a huge blunder regarding the party's database.

Magyar Péter Fotó: Fotő: MW Archiv

Peter Magyar's Career Started With a Lie

Over the past year, Peter Magyar has spread numerous falsehoods, and even his entry into politics was based on an obvious lie. It is worth recalling that in an interview with Partizan in February last year, he called the idea of entering politics a bad joke.

Yet shortly thereafter, he launched the 'Talpra, Magyarok!' (Arise, Hungarians!) movement, organized a rally for the national holiday on March 15, and soon after took over the Tisza Party, which he then led into both the municipal and European Parliament (EP) elections.

Although the politician heading his party’s EP list repeatedly vowed he would not go to Brussels even if elected, after the June 9 election he argued that it would be more useful for him to sit in the European Parliament after all.

Peter Magyar also contradicted himself on the issue of parliamentary immunity. During the campaign for the EP and municipal elections, the Tisza Party president pledged to abolish immunity.

However, after his nightclub scandal in June last year, his stance changed significantly and he had no intention of giving up the legal protection granted to him as an MEP.

At the Otkert nightclub, Peter Magyar got into an altercation with a man who was filming him. Magyar seized the man's phone and threw it into the Danube. Police launched an investigation on suspicion of vandalism and disorderly conduct, but due to Peter Magyar’s immunity as an MEP, the case was transferred to the Central Chief Prosecutor’s Office for Investigations.

A Serious National Security Risk

One of Peter Magyar's biggest and most dangerous lies was his claim that the plane of the fallen Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, landed in Hungary. The outlet Magyar Hang even released a photo supposedly showing the Syrian ex-president’s arrival in Budapest, but it quickly turned out to be false: a 12-year-old photo used to deceive readers. Despite this, the post with the fake news remained on Peter Magyar’s Facebook page for a long time afterward.

Peter Magyar didn’t back down on Klubradio either, maintaining his usual tone and insisting he had no reason to apologize.

The leader of the Tisza Party continued spreading this misinformation on ATV, arguing on the show Egyenes Beszed (Straight Talk) that the government had not yet officially denied Bashar al-Assad’s arrival in Hungary. Due to this spreading of false information, the Constitution Protection Office launched an investigation, and the National Assembly's security committee held a session involving civilian intelligence agencies. The false claim was deemed a serious risk to national security.

 

Peter Magyar Lied About Insider Trading Too

In early February, Index broke the story of Peter Magyar’s stock scandal. The outlet reported that on Friday, July 21, 2023, after the market had closed, Opus Global Nyrt. announced a stock buyback program, which significantly boosted the share price. On that same day at 3:00 pm, that is, before the  stock exchange closed and before the buyback announcement, Peter Magyar sold all his other shares and purchased Opus stock worth tens of millions of forints.

According to the article, the following Monday, after the stock market opened, Magyar sold these shares at a higher price, making a sizable profit of several million forints.

Importantly, at the time, Magyar was a member of the supervisory board of MBH, a bank linked to Lorinc Meszaros, and Opus is also one of Meszaros’s companies.

Magyar responded to the article by claiming that not a word of the Index report was true and stated he had neither bought nor sold any shares on the date mentioned.

Magyar Nemzet reported that the president of the Tisza Party tried to wriggle out of the situation using a peculiar trick, claiming the transaction was recorded the following week, meaning he could not have purchased the shares on Friday. In other words, it could not have been insider trading. However, on the stock exchange, transactions are not recorded instantly—they’re often logged later. Thus, it's quite possible that Friday's purchase was registered at a later time.

The Hungarian National Bank, which oversees the stock market, initiated proceedings and sent a long list of questions to the leader of the Tisza Party to clarify the details. The publicly disclosed questions revealed that Magyar placed the order to buy Opus shares on June 21, 2023.

That is, before the public was informed about the buyback program, which later significantly raised the price of the company's shares.

Peter Magyar Denied Wiretapping Judit Varga

Peter Magyar also lied in the European Parliament recently when Jorge Buxade, an MEP from Spain’s right-wing Vox party, asked him whether it was true that he began his political career by wiretapping his ex-wife, Judit Varga, the mother of his three children.

In his response, Peter Magyar stated that he was not surprised that a Fidesz ally was "regurgitating" the vile lies of Fidesz propaganda, and that neither he nor Hungarian society paid any attention to other "propaganda lies."

So, Peter Magyar denied having wiretapped Judit Varga.

However, the party leader seemed to forget that he had previously admitted to recording his ex-wife.

I’m not proud that I had to record something like that, and even less proud that I had to make it public, but sometimes necessity knows no law,

he said at the time.  "This was a special situation, the recording was made in January 2023. I had never recorded anything like that before. I’m not the type of person who would do such a thing," he continued his explanation.

Peter Magyar’s Latest Lie

The Tisza Party's database scandal recently caused quite a stir, as activists were labeled with unacceptable tags such as "alkie" and “crippled pensioner," and the data eventually leaked. Peter Magyar claimed they had been the target of an intelligence operation using Russian methods and that military-grade spyware had been installed on their devices.

According to the party leader, a list had leaked from one of their Discord groups containing data on volunteers affiliated with the party—mostly people who had been active in various Tisza community groups. In his post, Magyar emphasized that the Discord server in question was a volunteer initiative and had no formal or informal link to the Tisza Party.

In the end, it was Peter Magyar himself who exposed the truth by announcing the shutdown of the Discord server.

Later, the Tisza Party discovered that the embarrassing leak hadn’t come from Discord after all, but from a poorly configured Google document intended for a small group coordinating and training activists. According to Mandiner, a female employee of the party had apparently made an error by incorrectly setting the document’s sharing permissions.

Mate Kocsis posted on social media that, according to a letter from the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (NAIH),

the Tisza Party stated at the beginning of the investigation that it was the administrator of the database.

This made it clear that Peter Magyar had lied about the database scandal as well.

Cover photo: Peter Magyar (Photo: MW Archive)