In 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, colloquially known as FARA, was enacted into law in the US. the law requires it
Certain agents or persons acting on behalf of foreign governments or other foreign principals (including Americans) must disclose their relationships with foreign principals and provide information about their activities.
Those who willfully fail to do so can be prosecuted, according to information on the US Department of Justice website.
For example, in January 2012, a Kansas court sentenced former Michigan representative Mark D. Siljender to one year and one day in prison for obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent. The former congressman was indicted for his work for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), an Islamic charity linked to international terrorism.
In a 2021 case in California, Imad Shah Zuberi was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to violating FARA in 2019 and obstruction of justice in 2020.
Between 2013 and 2017, Zuberi contacted foreign nationals and representatives of foreign governments with claims that he could use his connections to change US foreign policy in favor of his clients. As part of his efforts to influence public policy, Zuberi hired lobbyists, hired public relations specialists and endorsed campaigns, helping to build relationships with high-ranking American officials, whom he represented on behalf of his clients. advocated.
In relation to the FARA allegation, Zuberi admitted that he had submitted false registration statements that concealed his role in lobbying on behalf of the Sri Lankan government, as well as his political contributions and the millions of dollars he had received.
Although the US is apparently intolerant of interference in its internal affairs, it is much less aggressive about the internal affairs of other countries. As is well known, in 2022, Hungary was the site of the worst campaign finance scandal in thirty years.
This became apparent when Peter Marky-Zay, either inadvertently or intentionally, mentioned on Magyar Hang’s Gulyasagü podcast last August that the Everybody’s Hungry Movement (MMM), founded by him, received hundreds of millions of dollars in support from the United States. was getting At the end of June, that is, long after the parliamentary elections, which were due in April 2022.
As the former United Left opposition PM candidate put it, it helped him pay “the last bills of the campaign”. He said June’s donation came outright from the US-based Action for Democracy Foundation, which has supported him with “three or four big bucks” in the past.
The NGO Action for Democracy was founded in the United States in early 2022, and is headed by none other than David Koranyi, the then capital city diplomacy advisor to Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsoni, and who previously served as Prime Minister of Hungary. He was also the chief advisor of Gordon Bajnai.
Shortly afterwards, Peter Marki-Zay published a full account of the donations his movement had received. Although it is not clear exactly from whom the sometimes staggering sums were received, one thing is certain: eight “macro donations” totaling 1.86 billion forints in US dollars fattened the MMM’s bank account through Action for Democracy. Gave.
The National Security Committee at its meeting on Wednesday heard a summary report of the National Information Center on the foreign interference case in last year’s parliamentary elections.
The Committee has requested that the report be made public and intends to publish it, provided that request is respected.
The issue of illegal campaign financing was also raised at Thursday’s cabinet meeting, where Gergeli Gulias, head of the PM’s office, said the cabinet would support making the report public if the request was received.
any knowledgeable [the contents] There can be no doubt in the report that the descriptor ‘dollar-left’ is almost too flattering a nickname for the Hungarian leftists after the acts committed against the country and its laws in the last election campaign,
Minister Guliyas said. He also emphasized that there is no democratic country in the world where foreign support for political parties is allowed, on this scale, it is absolutely unprecedented.
It is also worth noting that President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has not yet been indicted under FARA, although, as right-wing opinion leader Tucker Carlson has pointed out, the young Biden “was a foreign agent” but ” never registered”.
Source: www.bing.com
