The most important politicians are sometimes invisible. This truism definitely applies to Béla Kovács, Jobbik's foreign affairs president. Even though Kovács plays a major role in developing the party's foreign ties - especially those with Russia - the public know little of him.

However, he is worthy of attention: according to our information, he will take over the parliamentary seat in Brussels of Zoltán Balczó, who is due to return to the Hungarian Parliament after the April elections (Kovács works for Csanád Szegedi as an expert in the European Parliament).

Kovács, who during the time of the old regime pursued studies in Russia and Japan, defines himself as a private businessman and is presently the custodian of Europe's radical right-wing parties' joint treasury, since he is the deputy-president and treasurer of the Alliance of European National Movements, formed in Budapest in October last year.

In addition, he has been leading Jobbik's foreign affairs committee since 2005, has been the president of the party's organisation in Budapest's district 13 since the summer of 2006, and in the autumn of 2008 became the deputy-president of the metropolitan organisation. In painting a portrait of this man, Heti Válasz has gathered together numerous scraps of information - chiefly from Russian sources - although this has not produced a complete picture, and our efforts have been further hindered by the politician, who in the last minute cancelled an interview that had already been confirmed several times.

An internal affairs connection?

Béla Kovács has not pursued an ordinary career. He graduated from Saint Stephen's Vocational Secondary School of Economics in 1978, but had already spent time in Japan as a teenager. To our knowledge, during the mid-70's, his father was the caretaker for the Hungarian embassy in Tokyo. After finishing secondary school, Kovács was able to study political science at a university in Tokyo and so it is no wonder that he speaks Japanese at an advanced level.

Kovács was able to add to his good fortune: according to his CV, he graduated as an international economist in Moscow. Although he did not specify which institution he studied at, as far as we know, he graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), the Soviet Union's (and now Russia's) elite training school for diplomats. At that time the institute recruited the most trustworthy elements of the communist camp and this begs the question: was Kovács connected to the Hungarian, and possibly the Soviet, secret police?

Given the nature of the situation, nothing can be verified with certainty. However, based on the fact that he studied in Moscow and Tokyo, it would not be far-fetched to assume that Béla Kovács would have at least attracted the attention of the Hungarian recruitment officers for the secret service. (Japan was one of the important targets in Hungarian intelligence's theft of western products on the COCOM list.)

In his publicly accessible CV, the mystery man is somewhat reticent about the period following his studies. Before the EP elections last year, he wrote about himself: "from 1988 to 2003 I worked in a leading position at international trading companies in Japan and Russia". By this year he had modified this to "I worked at an international company in a leading position in Japan and Russia." However, a description of the nature of his entrepreneurial activities would be of vital importance, since Kovács owes his leading position in the party to his status as a businessman and the fact that he contributed millions to the campaign jointly launched by MIÉP and Jobbik.

Russian business

Was Béla Kovács thinking of a company called Naura when he wrote about an "international trading" company? At first sight this seems to be the case, since before his career in Brussels Kovács would often show off his name card in English with the name of this business, the title "international division manager" and a Moscow address. However, a more thorough examination disproves the veracity of this, since Kovács founded Naura on his Russian mother-in-law's underwear business, a tiny company that has not demonstrated any measurable commercial activity for years.

It follows that a Russian mother-in-law is the result of a Russian marriage, but in his CV written for the EU election of 2009, Kovács got around this hitch by shyly claiming, "my wife is an Austrian citizen." At the same time it is interesting that his foreign relatives are connected to a business which at first glance suggests considerable solvency. Selena, another company set up by his wife's mother in Moscow, is registered in one of the office blocks in Tverskaya Street, near to the Kremlin. However, this is another part of the smokescreen, since 300 other companies are registered at the same address, and Selena, which does not show any other signs of life, cannot be reached at this address.

The company nevertheless seems to have lived on, if only in name, since Kovács's Hungarian limited company is called Selena-2. However, the politician's visible, domestic business activities are limited to his ownership of a grocery store, which can hardly be regarded as top of the market. If, however, there is no sign of a solid company home base, much alluded to by Béla Kovács himself, the question arises: why does Jobbik's foreign affairs officer regularly go to Russia for "business purposes"? According to our information, in 2006 alone, which was an especially "red hot" year in Hungarian politics, Kovács applied for and received a Russian visa on five occasions.

One certainty is that in addition to visiting relatives and conducting a little business here and there, Kovács still had (and has) time for networking, too. Proof of this is Gábor Vona's visit to Moscow in December 2008, where he was accompanied by Kovács. According to Jobbik's account published at the time on the party's English language home page, in addition to researchers and students who met to analyse the relationship between Russia and Europe, a representative of then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party also made an appearance.

Vasili Podvoisky, the man who played host to Vona and Kovács, appears to be somewhat of an oddity, not least because his European Academy for the Preservation of National Traditions, which supposedly organised the visit, is nowhere to be found. One of Podvoisky's other interests is an underground training school called the Graduate School of Consulting, dealing with psychology and "human resource development", which, according to the Russian press, has been banned from several institutes of higher education because of its occultist and esoteric dogma. However, because of its veneer of authority, the "school" rented out premises in reputable Moscow universities and in exchange for high tuition fees holds various courses in "personal development".

In December last year, Tatyana Karpachova, the deputy-dean of an orthodox institute of higher education, wrote in a letter that the graduate school posed a similar threat to that of scientology, following which the institution was expelled from the pedagogy faculty of the Moscow State University. Had Gábor Vona known about this, he might not have placed his arm on Podvoisky's shoulder in such a friendly way in the photo taken of their meeting. He would presumably have been more cautious had he been informed that his new acquaintance was connected to the Russian military and state security.

A nest egg for the "nationals"

One of the "school's" leading instructors, Sergei Rikov, not only teaches at a military technical college, but is also a member of the Military Scientific Academy. The connection the manipulative psychology taught here has with the military and defence comes as no surprise, since even during the Soviet era psychologists stood at the forefront in the struggle waged between internal subversives and state security. Sane, albeit disagreeable, dissidents would soon find themselves in a mental hospital and after their psychological "treatment" would very probably leave it mentally unbalanced.

Béla Kovács is not only building up Jobbik's ties with this dubious entity, which counts for little in Russian grand politics, but also with western pro-Russian radicals. He played a key role in the wild cat scheme staged by the Alliance of European National Movements, formed in Budapest in the autumn of last year. The founding declaration initially subscribed to by Jobbik, the French Front National, the Italian Fiamma Tricolore and Swedish and Belgian "nationals" has now also been signed by the British National Party as well as a Ukrainian and a Portuguese unit. Jobbik bear the greater part of the burden in the organisation, since they have three EP representatives, matching the number of France's National Front from a population of 60 million.

It is no coincidence that Kovács has been the vice-president and treasurer of the alliance since the beginning of 2010. Although there are not enough members to form a faction in Brussels, and thus the radicals cannot receive a share of the financial support that for example the European People's Party and the socialists are entitled to, EU funding was nevertheless a motivation to found the organisation. Bruno Gollnisch, the vice-president of the Front National, spoke about this at a press conference in Paris last November. According to Gollnisch, it is an outrage that while the big parties receive 11 million Euro per year from Brussels, the "nationals" are not entitled to anything and thus they will try to change this through the new alliance.

We have thus far outlined a rather ambiguous political career. Although Béla Kovács has no perceptible business potency, he was able - already in 2006 - to financially support Jobbik. He started to build up his Russian connections as far back as his Soviet elite training days, but the present clues lead to a company with a dubious past in law enforcement.

The European right-wing radical parties neglected to ask themselves if Kovács was the sort of man who would fraternize with a Moscow organisation lumped together with the scientologists, and instead elected him as their fund manager. They did so possibly because like takes pleasure in like: these parties, for example in regard to their views about energy security - whether they want to or not - support Russian interests - which go against unified European action.

THE EASTERN LINE - IN THE WEST

Although information about the work of Jobbik's EMPs principally reaches the Hungarian public through what Krisztina Morvai has to say, the activities of the other two representatives, Zoltán Balczó and Csanád Szegedi, are no less interesting. Their line on foreign affairs is especially worthy of attention: the two politicians regularly speak out in the interest of tightening the relations that have been formed with Russia and the Central Asian post-Soviet territories.

It is true that they have an official basis for this: Balczó is a substitute member of the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, while Szegedi is a regular member of the "EU-Kazakhstan, EU-Kirgistan, EU-Uzbegistan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and of the delegation responsible for maintining ties with Turkmenistan and Mongolia".

Balczó, who has spoken out on issues ranging from language use by minority Hungarians to European foreign affairs services, clearly established his intent in regard to Russian relations. According to our information, his speeches were written by Béla Kovács. Balczó is not only a zealous believer in a "strategic partnership", but in September last year in the European Parliament also unambiguously quoted Russian prime minister Putin's cynical opinion in regard to the Nabucco pipeline that would result in the EU (and thus Hungary) receiving gas from multiple sources: "anyone can lay as many rusty, old pipes in the ground as they like but there should be something to fill them with."

Csanád Szegedi takes an even more ideological line in regard to relations with the East: referring to "Scythian-Hun-Avar" continuity, he envisions "a great Turanian alliance" between Hungary and the former Soviet "red khanites" in Central Asia. Furthermore, in February this year, in connection with the elections in Uzbekistan, he praised the regime which has been condemned by human rights groups and which in 2005 unhesitatingly unleashed machine gun fire upon people demonstrating against it, killing hundreds.

Béla Kovács, who has not publically refuted one single statement made in the portrait that was published about him in Heti Válasz, is the president of the party's foreign affairs committee. Although he previously classified our article as falling into the category of "media crime", a term previously coined by Jobbik, he confirmed all the information in it, which is as follows:

According to this:

Although previously not published, it is true that he completed his elite training in the communist empire, at the University of Foreign Relations in Moscow.

His wife is Russian. In his previous CV Kovács concealed his wife's nationality by claiming, "my wife is an Austrian citizen".

It is true that he has ties to the Russian company Selena Plc., and this confirms Béla Kovács's regular Russian "business trips" as reported by our magazine.

On not one single occasion has Béla Kovács refuted our information according to which he financially supported the party's campaign in 2006.

Kovács's silence also confirms that upon Zoltán Balczó's return, he will be Jobbik's European parliamentary representative.

Kovács writes of his and Gábor Vona's visit to Russia in December 2008 that their host Vaszili Podvoisky runs a successful pedagogical institute and has nothing to do with the scientologists. We did not claim this to be so, but merely quoted from an article in the Russian press which referred to Podvoisky's school as a con. Furthermore, we only quoted the deputy-dean of an orthodox university who classified the institute of Vona and Kovács's host, who is a psychologist and teacher, as being in a dangerous category like scientology, because of its occult methods.

In connection with the visit by Jobbik's president to Moscow in 2008, Kovács claimed, "Gábor Vona never met any Russian politicians, either before or after this visit". We did not claim this. We merely quoted the still accessible 2009 January English language report of jobbik.com, which provides information on the party president's presentation held in Moscow.

According to this report, a representative of the United Russia Party also participated at the event. ("The representation by the Jobbik Chairman met with huge interest in the audience of students, teachers, scientists and a representative of the United Russia Party.")

"The article published about me in Heti Válasz would have been less messy if the journalist had accepted my invitation for lunch, since today I expected him at the European Parliament," wrote Béla Kovács.

Kovács kept quiet about the important fact that when we first contacted him in the middle of last week, we told him that the article was going to appear in our 1 April issue, therefore, it was hardly possible for us to meet him on that day. Since Béla Kovács subsequently told us that he would be coming home for a visit from Brussels, we agreed on an appointment for 3 p.m. last Sunday in Jobbik's Dénes Csengey Library in Curia Street.

Kovács cancelled the interview at noon on Sunday and proposed to talk with us instead in Brussels on 1 April. Our phone inquiry and text messages, in which we informed him about the article going to press on Tuesday morning and thus making the Thursday meeting impossible, were left unanswered.