For Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the stakes of next month's general election just got a lot higher. A spate of corruption allegations and new questions over whether his government had a role in leaking recordings of civil society leaders mean a surprise loss could translate into years spent behind bars.

With less than two weeks to go before the April 8 vote, Orbán's Fidesz party and oligarch Lajos Simicska have reignited a bitter personal feud in the media and are publishing damning information to wound their opponents in the polls.

Publications owned by Simicska — Orbán's former close friend turned nemesis — have published stories that have raised a host of questions on the extent of government corruption and, if proven, could prompt an upset in the polls for Orbán followed by criminal proceedings.

Orbán-controlled media outlets, meanwhile, have doubled down on accusations that nefarious outside forces are trying to meddle in Hungary's internal affairs. Their recent reports have been based on material from secret recordings of NGO leaders and individuals connected to Hungarian-American financier George Soros.

The ruling Fidesz party is in a strong position ahead of the election, in which it faces a deeply divided opposition.

The anti-Soros reports may yet backfire, as they have raised a red flag among security experts that the government may have engaged in illegal activity, possibly in collusion with foreign groups or intelligence agencies, to obtain damaging recordings on independent civil society groups.

Hungary’s intelligence agency, the Constitution Protection Office (AH), was made aware of foreign citizens’ efforts to collect information on NGOs as early as January of this year, a person with knowledge of the investigation told POLITICO.

The ruling Fidesz party is in a strong position ahead of the election, in which it faces a deeply divided opposition. Fidesz’s support in early March among all Hungarian adults stood at 39 percent and among those who know whom they will vote for at 54 percent, according to pollster Median. But 29 percent of voters do not have a party preference, and the competing leaks signal that the government is worried.

The corruption-related reports published in Magyar Nemzet — a Simicska-owned publication — include allegations that a Fidesz MP is serving as the director of an offshore company and that a senior government politician has for years been going on expensive hunting trips financed by a businessman who benefited heavily from state and EU-funded contracts. (Both have denied any wrongdoing.)

Money laundering

The latest report, published Monday, claims that the FBI is investigating a money laundering scheme linked to Orbán’s government that saw between €3 billion and €4 billion funnelled out of the country. The money, which according to Magyar Nemzet the FBI suspects to be stolen EU funds, was allegedly laundered using Hungarian state-owned banks as well as diamonds and bank accounts in the Arab world.

Following the publication of the story, the Hungarian police issued an unusual public statement calling the article "far removed from reality" and arguing that the case in question has nothing to do with public or EU funds.

Meanwhile, government-controlled Magyar Idők published an article claiming the paper is in possession of a recording in which a Ukrainian civil society leader who used to head a Soros-funded organization admitted that his group played a role in the Maidan revolution that toppled former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government. The article went on to state that the CIA and Soros were behind the change of government in Ukraine, implying a similar intervention could be on the cards for Hungary.

At least four organizations were approached under false pretenses over the past months with the intent of gathering damaging secret recordings from their staff: the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations, the Hungarian grassroots group Migration Aid, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe.

Unknown individuals also approached a former director of the Soros-backed Ukrainian NGO International Renaissance Foundation and a former employee of the Soros Management Fund using similar methods.

In all cases, the organizations were approached first via email by individuals claiming to be supportive businesspeople who presented themselves to various potential targets as being from Bahrain, Finland, Macedonia and France. The individuals presented fake companies, websites, LinkedIn pages and phone numbers. Some NGOs ignored the emails, while others agreed to meetings.

Meetings between the unknown individuals and their targets took place in January and February of this year, at times within days of one another, in New York City’s Ritz Hotel, Vienna’s Intercontinental Hotel and at a location in Amsterdam, with the unknown individuals speaking English with different accents, including French and Israeli, multiple individuals with knowledge of the meetings told POLITICO.

The Constitution Protection Office, as well as a spokesperson for the government and an attorney for Simicska did not respond to questions for this article.

The reports alleging Soros-funded attempts by foreign organizations to meddle in Hungarian politics highlight that Orbán has not shifted his election strategy and is targeting his campaign on NGOs, Soros, and invisible external enemies.

“So my task is to try to mobilize people, and alert them to what is going on, to what is happening,” the prime minister said in a Sunday radio interview.

“We have gathered a great deal of knowledge about this network, and we are making this public, because we have a single instrument at our disposal: the glare of public attention."

This article has been updated with new information.