Hungarian Far Right Party Politician Accused of Being KGB Spy

The Hungarian government has requested that the European Parliament lift legal immunity on far-right MEP Bela Kovacs, so it can investigate allegations that he is a KGB agent.

Kovacs is a member of nationalist party Jobbik and a vocal supporter of Russia, but now stands accused of being a KGB informer, following a honeytrap operation in the 1970s.

"The case is currently in front of the European Parliament, after the Hungarian prosecutor general's office turned to its president requesting the suspension of MEP Béla Kovács' immunity," Hungary's prime minister's office confirmed to Newsweek.

Hungarian investigators are currently awaiting a decision from Brussels to begin their investigation, which could see Kovacs jailed for more than 10 years if found guilty.

The move follows revelations from Hungarian newspaper Index.

On Tuesday, the newspaper reported that Kovac's wife, Russian Svetlana Izstosina, was legally married to two other men, one of them a nuclear scientist at Moscow State University.

In the decades prior to Kovacs emergence into Hungarian politics on a nationalistic anti-EU platform, Kovacs and his wife travelled unhindered frequently to Russia, unhindered by the Soviet Union's strict border laws.

Izstosina is alleged to have acted as a messenger for the Soviet government, with Kovacs acting as an accomplice after she acted as a honeytrap: a spy who seduced men to blackmail or extract information from them.

According to intelligence and security sources quoted by the paper, Kovacs held "confidential" meetings with Russian diplomats in 2009.

Kovacs denies allegations that he worked for a foreign intelligence agency. When confronted with evidence that his wife is also married to Masanori Omiya, a Japanese man, Kovacs reportedly told the newspaper, "I think I have as many questions for her as you do."

The MEP has close ties to Russia, with Russian president Vladimir Putin calling for him to be an election monitor for the disputed Crimea referendum in March.

Experts say that the KGB has infiltrated a number of far-right and far-left wing organisations in Europe in an attempt to undermine its strategic rival the EU.