Billions in Public Funds Funneled Into Orbán’s Social Media Contracts, New Government Reveals

Hungarian authorities have disclosed details of multi-billion-forint social media contracts awarded without a tender to Viktor Orbán’s press advisor.

Contracts Without Tenders

Agreements totaling 4 billion forints (approximately 11 million euros) were concluded without a tender with a company belonging to Fanny Kaminski, press advisor to Viktor Orbán. The original contract was signed in 2022 between the Prime Minister’s Office and Kaminski’s company, with an initial monthly salary of 63.68 million forints (175,000 euros) covering services such as photography, video production, and media monitoring reports.

The contract was amended four times, each time increasing the monthly remuneration. Following the latest change in September 2025, the rate reached 86.487 million forints per month, despite no changes in the scope of required content.

Notice Filed Over Social Media Content

Viktor Orbán’s social media. There is a notification.

Over 44 months, the company received a total of 4.228 billion forints from public funds for creating content for Orbán’s social networking portals. However, service execution documentation shows that video recordings lasted an average of 15 seconds, and in one month, over 63 million forints was paid for just 21 minutes of film material and 411 photographs.

Based on publicly available data, this implies at least a threefold overvaluation of costs, even by international standards. Moreover, the contract was exempted from public procurement procedures under the pretext that the prime minister is a protected person, according to a statement from Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s office. It added that some of the materials prepared in 2026 under the contract bore more resemblance to election campaign materials than coverage of the former prime minister’s work. According to the current Hungarian authorities, abuse of power and exceeding official authority may have been committed by the former head of government.

Representatives of Certain Media Excluded

Representatives of certain media were not allowed in.

This is not the only information from recent days regarding potential irregularities in the functioning of Viktor Orbán’s government. The 444 portal reported this week that employees of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs were regularly summoned by then-minister Peter Szijjarto to his press conferences to fill the room.

The portal added that invitations to the minister’s conferences in Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government were typically received by public media and those favoring the former authorities, while independent media were denied entry.

Representatives of certain media were deliberately barred from attending the conferences, while measures were taken to ensure no empty seats remained in the room, with ministry employees utilized as a solution to fill it, reported 444.

Political Landscape and Fidesz Defeat

After 16 years of uninterrupted rule, Viktor Orbán’s party, Fidesz, suffered a clear defeat in April against the Tisza party of current Prime Minister Peter Magyar. Tisza won a constitutional majority of 141 out of 199 seats in parliament. July polls also showed that Fidesz’s popularity continues to fall while Tisza’s rises, and reports have surfaced in Hungarian media regarding plans to form a new party by dissatisfied Fidesz members.