Two former Hungarian ministers detained over suspected bribery and misuse of public funds

Two ministers in Viktor Orbán’s former far-right government suspected separately of misusing millions of euros of public funds and taking millions more in bribes have been detained, hours after Hungarian MPs voted to lift their immunity.Prosecutors said on Tuesday that Balázs Hankó, Orbán’s culture minister and still an MP in the former prime minister’s nationalist Fidesz party, was ​taken into custody late on Monday. Hankó is suspected of misappropriation of funds. He has denied any wrongdoing.Miklós Seszták, an MP from Fidesz ally KDNP who served as minister for national development between 2014 and 2018, was also detained on Monday as part of an ⁠investigation into alleged bribery. He too has denied wrongdoing.“Yesterday was an important day,” said Hungary’s prime minister, Péter Magyar on Tuesday. His Tisza party swept to victory in April elections promising to investigate alleged corruption and abuse of office during Orbán’s 16-year rule.“After decades of lies, for the first time, many millions of Hungarians could experience what real regime change and equality before the law really mean, Magyar said on social media. “Hungary is no longer a country without consequences.”The arrests came hours after Hungary’s parliament on Monday voted to suspend Hankó and Seszták’s immunity – but also that of Magyar, who had asked for his to be lifted so he could clear himself of what he called a “character assassination”.The graft investigations into the Orbán-era ministers are the first against senior figures in the former government. Magyar, meanwhile, is accused of snatching a phone from a man filming him in a nightclub in 2024 and throwing it into the Danube River.The prime minister has denied his conduct amounted to theft and called the case, which involves a damages claim of €300 (£260), a “sham”. He said he took responsibility for his actions but denied committing a crime and criticised prosecutors for “conflating” the ex-ministers’ corruption cases with “an attempted political character assassination”.Magyar ​has repeatedly said that in recent years corruption and misuse of public funds have cost Hungary between 8% and 10% of its GDP under successive governments led by Orbán, who has repeatedly denied allowing rampant corruption and outright theft of public money during more than a decade and half in power.Prosecutors allege Hankó oversaw the criminal misuse of 17.3bn forints (€47m) of public funds from Hungary’s national cultural fund (NKA), channelling the money to artists and groups with ties to Fidesz and financing its 2026 election campaign.“My conscience is clear, this is a political show trial,” Hankó said ‌in a live video broadcast on Orbán’s Facebook page shortly before his arrest.In July, police raided the Fidesz offices and seized the party’s internet servers in connection ⁠with alleged “misappropriation and other criminal offences” at the NKA, prompting Orbán to accuse authorities of conducting a sham investigation in order to render his party “legally unviable”.Prosecutors also suspect Seszták of accepting more than 12bn forints (€32.6m) in bribes and kickbacks connected to vehicle procurements under Hungary’s state bus company, as well as to public construction projects. The case centres on the purchase of secondhand buses at allegedly inflated prices.Separately, Hungary’s national ‌asset protection and recovery office, the anti-corruption body established by Magyar’s government as part of his anti-graft ⁠drive, on ⁠Monday announced the ​first four cases it intends to tackle.The first concerned “selling ​political connections to obtain residence permits ‌for employment”, the body said in a statement, and the second case is about alleged corruption involving local council expenditure on park maintenance and public catering.The third case involved “a state-owned company and state investments” and has links to Dániel Jellinek, a real estate mogul and one of Hungary’s wealthiest businessmen, the statement said.The real estate firm that Jellinek heads has said he will cooperate fully with the authorities. “Our firm position is that Mr Jellinek has not committed any offence in connection with the matter. We are confident that the investigation will confirm this and that the proceedings against him will soon be discontinued,” it said in a statement this month.The fourth concerned “seemingly unjustified propaganda ​and event costs” at the sovereignty protection office, ​an Orbán-era body set up to monitor what Fidesz alleged was “undue political interference” by foreign entities in Hungary, and abolished by Magyar’s government in June.