# Béla Kovács **Béla Kovács** (born February 25, 1960, Budapest) is a former Member of the European Parliament for Hungary's far-right Jobbik party who was convicted in absentia in 2022 of spying for Russia on EU institutions. ## Jobbik and Moscow Kovács was a Jobbik member from 2003 to 2016 and an MEP from 2010 to 2019. Colleagues reportedly nicknamed him "KGBéla." The European Parliament lifted his immunity in the espionage case on October 14, 2015. ## Prosecution Hungarian prosecutors charged him on December 6, 2017 with spying on EU institutions for a third country, plus forgery; he said he "was never a member of either Hungarian or any other foreign intelligence service." On September 25, 2020 a Budapest court acquitted him of espionage but convicted him of budget fraud involving "ghost" interns, with an 18-month suspended sentence. On September 28, 2022 Hungary's supreme court, the Kúria, convicted him in absentia of espionage, budget fraud and forgery and sentenced him to five years in prison and a ten-year ban from public affairs; the spying was found to have run from 2012 to February 2014. **Current status:** Wikipedia says he lives and teaches in Russia; no later update verified. ## RWKB angle Kovács is a sitting European far-right parliamentarian convicted of espionage for Moscow — the hard-evidence end of the Russia–European far-right relationship. See [[International Far-Right Networks]]. ## See Also - [[Hungary]] - [[World National-Conservative Movement]]