More than 20,000 individuals had donated by Saturday to a fud for a former Hungarian police investigator who exposed a covert operation allegedly targeting the opposition of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, two weeks before elections.
The quickly expanding fundraiser signalled widespread public outrage over the case, dubbed "Orban-gate" by opposition leader Peter Magyar, who called it the most serious national security scandal since the country's democratic transition in 1990.
Nationalist Orban, continuously in power since 2010, is facing an unprecedented challenge from Magyar's TISZA party, which has been leading independent polls for over a year, ahead of the April 12 vote.
Former police captain Bence Szabo claims to have uncovered evidence suggesting that the country's domestic intelligence service was trying to infiltrate TISZA's IT systems since at least 2025.
The ex-investigator made the allegations in a video published Thursday, which has since amassed over 2 million views on YouTube in the central European country of 9.5 million.
The government admitted there was a covert operation, but said it was launched before TISZA was established, targeting "Ukrainian spies".
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Orban has sought to portray his rival as a "puppet" of Brussels and Kyiv, making unproven allegations that Ukraine is interfering in the campaign to help the opposition.
A fundraiser on online platform 4fund.com was launched Friday evening by Szabo's brother to help the ex-investigator with his legal fees and other financial burdens.
The initial goal was 12,500 euros, but donation pledges had already crossed 500,000 euros less than a day after it was launched.
Szabo has worked in the police's elite cybercrime division specialising in child pornography cases.
Last July, the division received a tip that two Hungarian men intend to use a "hidden camera" to record pornographic footage involving minors.
According to Szabo, no traces of child pornography was found but it turned out the suspects were IT specialists linked to TISZA, and one of them was pressured by unknown individuals to help compromise the party's IT system.
The former officer said they experienced unusual intelligence agency interventions during the investigation, and his superiors did not allow them to look into the operation against the opposition.
Szabo said these factors led them to believe that a special unit within the domestic intelligence services under direct control of a minister or a state secretary targeted TISZA.
He handed in his resignation and blew the whistle, sharing all information with investigative outlet Direkt36, which published an article detailing the case on Wednesday
Within 24 hours, Szabo was terminated from his job, police raided his home and he was accused of abuse of office.
(With newswires)
