(TDB) - A Californian winemaker alleged to be behind an anti-Semitic website is thought to have fled to Canada after the FBI issued a warrant for his arrest.

Béla Varga, owner of the kuruc.info domain, is charged with stalking and harassing an attorney in May who had obtained a subpoena to question him about his ties to the Hungarian website, according to reports by the Press Democrat. 

He was released on bail but then failed to attend two further hearings leading to his bail being withdrawn and a warrant issued for his arrest.

The Budapest-based Athena Institute, which monitors European extremism, described the kuruc.info site as the “most active hate group operating in Hungary”.

The website in question, registered in the US but written in Hungarian, is described as “a patriotic Hungarian conservative, right-wing nationalist, fact-finding news site”, with its domain name, “kuruc” said to be associated with the nationalist Hungarian movement that opposed the foreign reign of the Hapsburg Dynasty, according to rawstory.com.

The Hungarian native is believed to have arrived in the US in 1988 with the intention of establishing himself as a winemaker, later working at Claar Cellars in Columbia Valley and Chateau Soverain, according to vintners.net.

The lawsuit against him, filed in San Francisco by the Action and Protection Foundation, a Hungarian human rights organisation, is seeking to gain more information about Varga’s ties to the website so that criminal and civil proceedings can proceed in Hungary, where there are laws against anti-Semitism.

Varga is believed to be in Canada where is a citizen.