Hungarian prosecutors on Monday took two former ministers into custody on suspicion of corruption and abuse of office, hours after parliament voted to strip their immunity. The detentions of Miklós Seszták and Balázs Hankó mark a sharp escalation in Prime Minister Péter Magyar's campaign to hold figures from the Viktor Orbán era to account — a drive his government has branded Operation Purge.
Magyar's Tisza Party won April's parliamentary election on a platform that included a "Road to Jail" programme, and he announced the purge in June, vowing to dismantle what he describes as a system of state capture. "We are launching Operation Purge, which will close those long decades when Hungary could be held hostage by organised political and economic criminal groups," he told lawmakers at the time.
Charges and custody
Seszták, who served as development minister between 2014 and 2018, is suspected of accepting roughly €30 million in bribes tied to bus tenders. Hankó faces investigation over the disbursement of €46 million in cultural funds to public figures — payments that authorities largely view as disguised campaign financing. Both men deny wrongdoing and remain in custody as suspects.
After the detentions, Magyar wrote on social media that "after decades of lies, millions of Hungarians experienced for the first time what real regime change and equality before the law really mean. Hungary is finally not a country without consequences." He said the purge would accelerate.
The arrests follow a summer in which prosecutors moved faster on several Orbán-era files. Parliament, where Tisza holds a majority, lifted the immunity of the two former ministers and, separately, of Magyar himself in an unrelated theft case.
A new anti-corruption architecture
At the centre of the effort is the newly created National Asset Recovery and Protection Office, an anti-corruption body empowered to take over investigations from prosecutors, open new proceedings and issue warrants. The Public Prosecutor's Office and the National Tax Authority are also involved in certain cases.
Several other prominent figures are under scrutiny. György Matolcsy, former governor of the Hungarian National Bank, has been questioned as a suspect in a blackmail case linked to the removal of a manager at Erste Bank Hungary. Parliament's National Security Committee has summoned Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to a hearing over an investment agreement with Chinese carmaker BYD in Hungary; after the election, Szijjártó took a management position at BYD, raising conflict-of-interest concerns. No formal investigation has been opened against him.
Orbán himself could eventually be drawn in. Lawyers say his potential criminal liability arises in the so-called Golden Convoy case. In March, at the height of the campaign, two Ukrainian cash couriers carrying regular transfers from Vienna to Kyiv were stopped near Budapest; the couriers were detained and a large amount of cash and gold was confiscated. Authorities now consider the raid and detentions unlawful and are investigating Orbán's role. According to a former chief prosecutor, Orbán personally gave instructions to the anti-terrorist police.
"Authorities must decide whether there was a legal abuse in the Golden Convoy case or not. If Viktor Orbán is legally punished here, people will want to see it as political accountability for his responsibility for other corruption cases," said political analyst Szabolcs Dull.
Dull argued that accountability is the core of Magyar's political appeal. "He always had the greatest success in the campaign by promising accountability, confrontation and consequences. One of these elements is that he will hold those responsible for the past period to criminal proceedings and even send them to prison. The promise of handcuffs and bars, many times," he said.
Fidesz cries foul
On Monday evening, MPs from Orbán's Fidesz party accompanied Hankó to the prosecutor's office in a show of support. They cast the investigations as politically motivated and accused Magyar of acting like a tyrant. "Arbitrariness needs new victims every day. Today it's them, tomorrow it's you," Orbán wrote on social media. "We send a message to all Hungarians: the Tisza tyrants will not break the community of the national side; we will not let them! They cannot imprison half the country!"
Fidesz has also accused Magyar of dismantling the rule of law, including by removing former President Tamás Sulyok through a constitutional amendment. The party contends that Magyar's repeated calls to punish former officials threaten judicial independence.
Dull said Fidesz is under constant pressure to respond. "Fidesz has to react to those investigations every hour to explain to its own voters why its politicians, now former ministers, are being taken into custody one by one. For this, Fidesz has built a narrative of arbitrariness, giving its voters a story that a political showdown is taking place, to keep its base together," he said.
Magyar has sharply criticised prosecutors for pursuing the theft case against him — stemming from a May 2024 incident in which he confronted a man who had filmed him dancing in a nightclub and threw the man's phone into the Danube — alongside two corruption investigations involving millions of euros in public funds. The coming weeks will test whether his government can translate the promise of consequences into verdicts that satisfy voters without alienating Hungary's remaining partners in the European Union.
