Smer chair Robert Fico during a press conference on October 11, 2023. (source: TASR)
In the past, an informant of the Hungarian secret service was reportedly very close to Slovakia’s future prime minister Robert Fico.
Fico’s party Smer won the election on September 30. Fico himself will become the premier for the fourth time after running the country in 2006-2010 and in 2012-2016 and 2016-2020.
This informant was supposed to be Levente Magyar, now Viera Teťáková’s husband. Teťáková worked at the Slovak Government Office during the first two Fico governments as head of the protocol department.
It is not clear what information Magyar provided to Hungary and for how long.
The Ján Kuciak Investigative Journalism Centre in cooperation with Vsquare reporters broke the story.
Closer to Hungarian PM
Sources close to Magyar indicate that he may have been in contact with counterintelligence even when his then-girlfriend worked for Fico’s office. They jointly organised Fico’s meetings with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and allegedly had an impact on building relations between the two countries.
Teťáková worked at the Government Office during the first two Robert Fico governments and during the government of Iveta Radičová (2010-2012). During Fico’s second premiership, Teťáková met her current husband, Levente Magyar, who worked for Viktor Orbán’s staff at that time.
Neither the Slovak Government Office nor Smer responded to the centre’s questions about whether secret services alerted them to the fact that Teťáková, who was close to Robert Fico, had a relationship with the then-informant of the Hungarian counterintelligence.
Security threat
They did not answer the question as to whether Teťáková had a security clearance before she left the Government Office in 2015.
“Levente Magyar worked for a time as a secret informant (or secret contact) of the civilian secret service, which issues security clearances: Hungarian counter-intelligence, Constitution Protection Office (AH). This was confirmed by several sources familiar with Magyar’s ties to the Hungarian national security agencies,” writes the centre.
Security analyst and head of the Prague-based Centre for an Informed Society, Andrea Michalcová, believes that this is a security risk.
“It may have been a direct threat to the sovereignty of the Slovak Republic, because an important person in the Government Office could knowingly or unknowingly be helping in espionage for another country. And in the case of Hungary, we are not sure whether these reports are not reaching Russia, for example,” she said.
Today, Magyar is Hungary’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. According to several sources, he de facto runs this ministry.
Teťáková became publicly known after tabloid articles in 2014 hinted at her relationship with Fico. However, no one confirmed the rumours. Today, she works for the Hungarian refinery MOL.
