Hungary recovers nearly 20 million dollars in cash, some buried in forests, in probe of former Orban minister

Hungarian authorities have recovered nearly 20 million US dollars in cash, some of it buried in forests or hidden in farm buildings and warehouses, in a bribery investigation into Miklos Sesztak, who served as a minister under former prime minister Viktor Orban. 'During searches, investigators found large amounts of cash buried in forests, hidden in farm buildings, warehouses and a residential property, and stored in a high-value safe in a secluded location,' the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office said late on Friday.

Finance Minister Andras Karman said it took a dozen State Treasury workers eight hours using banknote counters to count the retrieved cash. Prime Minister Peter Magyar, who ousted Orban after 16 years in power in an April election, said the recovered cash signalled the end of what he described as a 'mafia' led by Orban's right-wing Fidesz party and its Christian Democrat allies during Orban's rule. Magyar campaigned on pledges to mend ties with the European Union, strained by years of disagreements under Orban, and to launch sweeping investigations into allegations of graft.

Operation Purgatory

The clampdown is part of an anti-graft drive the centre-right Magyar has dubbed 'Operation Purgatory', which 70 percent of respondents rated as 'very important' in a survey by the pollster Median carried by a Hungarian news website this week. Fidesz wrote in a social media post that it hoped Sesztak was not connected to the cash: 'Since the change of regime, every lawmaker in Hungary has sworn an oath to abide by and enforce the law. Fidesz-KDNP cannot associate itself with anyone who fails to do so. We trust that the images published by the asset recovery office have nothing to do with Miklos Sesztak.'

Minister denies wrongdoing

Sesztak, who was Orban's development minister from 2014 to 2018, has denied wrongdoing. His lawyer, Gabor Papp, told a local news website that the seized cash did not belong to Sesztak, who sits on parliament's Economic and Energy Affairs Committee, and added that the bribery case also involved other suspects. Papp did not respond to a request for comment on the recovery office's statement.

But Bence Retvari, parliamentary group leader of the Christian Democrats, said Sesztak, the party's vice chair, should relinquish his parliamentary mandate as he seeks to clear his name. 'This is an individual criminal case, and the criminal proceedings must be kept strictly separate from our political community,' Retvari said. 'Peter Magyar wants to use it to portray the entire right as a criminal organisation. We reject this in the strongest possible terms!'

A widening net

In separate investigations, two former ministers from Orban's government and former central bank chief Gyorgy Matolcsy are under arrest over graft accusations; they have denied wrongdoing. Authorities have also detained Orban's brother in a people-smuggling case that the former leader has dismissed as an act of political revenge. Political scientist Gabor Torok said the images of the cash were so vivid they likely spelled doom for Fidesz, whose support fell by half from its pre-election level to 16 percent of voters in November, a Median survey showed.