Police Brigadier General Zsolt Bodn\u00e1r, the former deputy head of Hungary\u2019s Counter Terrorism Center (TEK) has also been targeted with Pegasus, a military-grade spyware designed to hack smartphones, a Direkt36 investigation has revealed. His phone number appears in the leaked database that includes targets selected for surveillance by certain foreign clients of NSO Group, the Israeli company that developed the cyber weapon.<\/p>\n
The fact that TEK\u2019s former Deputy Director-General was among the targets is remarkable in several respects. The company that developed Pegasus specifically promotes its service by saying that \u201cNSO creates technology that helps government agencies prevent and investigate terrorism and crime to save thousands of lives around the globe.\u201d However, during his decades-long career in law enforcement, Zsolt Bodn\u00e1r himself led the fight against terrorism and organized crime at various authorities: he was deputy head of the Budapest Police Headquarters (BRFK) until 2010, then Deputy Director-General of TEK between 2010-2018.<\/p>\n
Bodn\u00e1r was selected for targeting at the time of his abrupt departure from the Counter Terrorism Centre in the spring of 2018. TEK claimed that this was due to organizational changes. However, according to news reports about his departure, he was let go due to loss of confidence and political infighting. Several sources familiar with TEK’s internal affairs told Direkt36 that TEK Director-General J\u00e1nos Hajd\u00fa indeed lost his trust in Bodn\u00e1r as he suspected that his deputy might have tried to gather sensitive internal information about TEK and about him personally. An internal investigation was then launched against Bodn\u00e1r and he was eventually removed from the organization.<\/p>\n
The database of telephone numbers selected for targeting by NSO\u2019s clients was jointly obtained by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based network of journalists, and international human rights advocacy organization Amnesty International. The data was shared with an international consortium of 17 media outlets, called the Pegasus Project, of which Direkt36 was the only participant of from Hungary.<\/p>\n
Appearing in the database does not necessarily mean that the device associated with the phone number has been successfully hacked with the spyware. However, in the case of many foreign and Hungarian targets, the forensic analyses of their devices managed to identify traces of Pegasus infection. NSO\u2019s spyware gives total access to all the data on a phone, even encrypted messages. Furthermore Pegasus can also remotely turn on a phone\u2019s microphone and camera.<\/p>\n
NSO Group claims that they sell Pegasus exclusively to foreign states and state authorities. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest that Hungarian targets of the Israeli spyware have been surveilled by Hungarian government agencies. A retired Hungarian intelligence officer as well as a former NSO employee confirmed to the international consortium of journalists that Hungary had indeed purchased and deployed Pegasus from 2018 onwards.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Orb\u00e1n government has not denied that they use the Pegasus spyware, nor do they refute the surveillance of individuals – journalists, media company owners, influential lawyers, opposition politicians etc.<\/a> – reported in Direkt36\u2019s previous articles.<\/p>\n Zsolt Bodn\u00e1r\u2019s case is not the first where the phone of a high-ranking Hungarian state official who had a conflict with his boss was targeted with Pegasus spyware. In a previous article, we reported that this was also the case with Secretary of State Attila Asz\u00f3di who clashed with J\u00e1nos S\u00fcli, the minister in charge of the upgrade of the Paks nuclear power plant<\/a>.<\/p>\n Former security officers interviewed by Direkt36 said that Bodn\u00e1r’s targeting was considered rather unusual. Several of them claimed that the surveillance of such a high-ranking national security official is an extreme event in the history of the Hungarian security agencies. According to them, this could only happen if someone was suspected of a very serious crime. However, this does not seem to be the case with Bodn\u00e1r as he has not been accused of any crime and found other jobs in the police force even after leaving TEK.<\/p>\n We sent media requests to both TEK and the Hungarian government about Zsolt Bodn\u00e1r\u2019s targeting with Pegasus spyware but received no answer. We also reached out to Bodn\u00e1r several times, through several channels, but he did not react either. As a result, it wasn\u2019t possible to analyze his smartphone, and we couldn\u2019t check if Bodn\u00e1r\u2019s phone was successfully hacked with Pegasus.<\/p>\n When the Counter Terrorism Centre was established in 2010, the new organization received criticism for entrusting its management to J\u00e1nos Hajd\u00fa, the former bodyguard of Viktor Orb\u00e1n and former special force policeman. Hajd\u00fa, who took part in many hundreds of police operations, had a lot of experience in busting criminals, but not so much in investigation and intelligence gathering, analysis, or organizational management. However, Hajd\u00fa tapped Zsolt Bodn\u00e1r, an experienced police chief, as his deputy, and together they led TEK for years as a seemingly inseparable couple.<\/p>\n According to his Linkedin profile, Bodn\u00e1r began his police career as a criminal investigator in 1983, headed the Organized Crime Division of the National Police Headquarters (ORFK) in the 1990s, and then served as BRFK’s Deputy Chief of Police in the 2000s. He left this position to join J\u00e1nos Hajd\u00fa at the newly formed counter-terrorism agency in 2010.<\/p>\n Sources familiar with the internal affairs of the organization described Zsolt Bodn\u00e1r as “the brain of the Counter Terrorism Centre”. He was responsible for counter-terrorism investigations and even international cooperation, but he was also the one who explained the details of specific operations or cases to the media several times at TEK’s press conferences.<\/p>\n That is why it surprised many even within TEK, when Bodn\u00e1r was fired overnight in May 2018, a former security officer experienced in counterterrorism told Direkt36. Moreover, Bodn\u00e1r was not only his deputy, but also a close friend of Hajd\u00fa. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely incomprehensible what happened between the two,\u201d said a mutual acquaintance of them, who added that the conflict was hurtful on a personal level too. One source recalled that Hajd\u00fa reported this suspicion to the Ministry of the Interior, headed by S\u00e1ndor Pint\u00e9r, where they took the report seriously. According to the usual procedure in such cases, a law enforcement organization such as TEK is not supposed to lead the investigation, as it cannot conduct a thorough internal investigation against its own leadership. In similar cases, the agency that launches an investigation is the internal counterintelligence, called the National Protective Service (NVSZ). They are authorized to deploy the full arsenal of intelligence tools to support their operations, like undercover agents, wiretapping, covert surveillance, etc.<\/p>\n A source with knowledge of the conflict said there was no suspicion that Bodn\u00e1r might have leaked information to organized criminal circles or to a foreign intelligence service. According to the source, the Deputy Director-General of TEK was fired as a result of one of the internal conflicts within the Fidesz government.<\/p>\n Press reports at the time already suggested that Bodn\u00e1r’s departure may have been related to the hostility between J\u00e1nos L\u00e1z\u00e1r and S\u00e1ndor Pint\u00e9r. L\u00e1z\u00e1r aspired to become Minister of Interior when Fidesz came to power in 2010, but the position was eventually given to S\u00e1ndor Pint\u00e9r. However, as over time L\u00e1z\u00e1r became more and more influential in Fidesz – at the peak of his power between 2014 and 2018, he led the Prime Minister\u2019s Office -, he also entered into a number of conflicts with Pint\u00e9r and his ministry apparatus, and even specifically with TEK.<\/p>\n After the 2018 election, L\u00e1z\u00e1r found himself outside of the government, and, according to Hungarian weekly Magyar Hang\u2019s report, his firing also resulted in Bodn\u00e1r’s departure for \u201creasons of trust\u201d. According to Index.hu reports at the time, Bodn\u00e1r had enemies in the Ministry of Interior and this has led to his sacking.<\/p>\n However, this was not the first occasion that TEK was suspected of gathering information on a top government official and then passing it on to another. In 2015, hvg.hu reported that, according to their sources, President J\u00e1nos \u00c1der had also lost his confidence in TEK, the agency that was providing his personal protection. \u201cFrom his conversations with Orb\u00e1n, it became clear to him that the Prime Minister knows about everything in his schedule. Not just about what\u2019s on his weekly agenda, but all of his meetings as well\u201d, hvg.hu wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\nEnd of a friendship<\/h2>\n
\nAccording to several sources familiar with TEK’s internal affairs, Hajd\u00fa began to suspect that his deputy was trying to gain access to various sensitive information about the organization and about him personally, out of political interests and career ambitions.<\/p>\n