Pole and Hungarian brothers be. How Warsaw and Budapest use taxpayers’ money to build pro-government propaganda

Graphics by Lenka Matoušková

With almost five hundred media outlets owned by a single pro-government foundation and hundreds of millions of euros of state advertising transferred annually to fund it, Hungary’s right-wing government has built Europe’s largest propaganda machine since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Warsaw follows in Budapest’s footsteps with a growing stream of taxpayers’ money funnelled […]

Attila Bátorfy

VSquare

Konrad Szczygieł

18.12.2019

We have all heard about troll farms. We know they are real. However, no one has any idea of how they take advantage of Facebook and Twitter. I learned about their methods when I went undercover to work as a troll for six months.

VSquare

04.11.2019

False Twitter and Facebook accounts improve the way the public sees the chairman of the Polish national state broadcaster TVP, help politicians in their election campaigns, act as lobbyists for armaments companies and carry out attacks directed at journalists. These accounts reach millions of recipients. A large-scale disinformation campaign is organized by a Warsaw-based PR company and an ex-politician, while the whole thing is co-founded by the National Disabled Persons Rehabilitation Fund. The clues from the troll farm lead us to Bartłomiej Misiewicz, who is currently suspected of corruption.

Konrad Szczygieł

Wojciech Cieśla

VSquare

04.11.2019

Huawei is at the center of heated political debate around the world. There is a general assumption among experts on China, ICT (Information and Communications Technology) experts and politicians that the company uses its ICT devices to spy on its users and provide this data to Chinese government. Though there have been separate cases of Huawei breaches […]

Wojciech Cieśla

Pavla Holcova

Anita Komuves

31.10.2019

Shutterstock

Early in the morning on January 8th, agents of the Polish Internal Security Agency entered the homes of Piotr D. and Wejing W. The former, who used to work in special services, was a manager at Orange, a telecommunications company. The latter was the head of sales at Poland’s Huawei’s office. They were charged with […]

Wojciech Cieśla

Szabolcs Panyi

Tamas Bodoky

31.10.2019

Law and Justice won the elections and maintained undivided power in Poland. The leader of the ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski hoped for more. Shortly after the first exit polls appeared on TV screens, giving PiS an apparent electoral victory, a close associate of Jaroslaw Kaczynski posted a photo on Twitter. It shows a moderately smiling […]

Ania Gielewska

15.10.2019

Close associates of Poland’s justice minister organised a smear campaign aimed at judges who were critical of the changes in the Polish judiciary

Ania Gielewska

19.09.2019

Political rally during the presidential campaign in Madagascar. Photo: Skip Russell (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In November 2018, several Polish activists and journalists from a leftist website joined Russia’s CIS-EMO delegation on a trip to Madagascar to monitor the country’s presidential election. The group of observers included people with links to the Kremlin. Yet instead of acting as observers, they secretly funded the campaigns of several presidential candidates.

Patryk Szczepaniak

Konrad Szczygieł

Mateusz Bajek

30.08.2019

Many Western allies of Hungary are worried about Russia’s International Investment Bank (IIB) having moved its seat to Budapest. In the meantime the government of Hungary and IIB’s management are arguing that this is only a regular international bank and cannot even be categorized as ‘Russian.’ However, VSquare and its partners reveal how IIB’s head […]

VSquare

03.08.2019

design by Lenka Matoušková

The management board of the Russian-led International Investment Bank (IIB) held its first meeting in its new headquarters, Budapest, this week. The move of IIB from Moscow to Budapest has been controversial since it was announced: experts, historians and the media have been worried that the bank would be a tool for the Kremlin to […]

VSquare

18.07.2019