Hungarian authorities have recovered nearly $20 million in cash, some of it buried in forests or hidden in farm buildings and warehouses, in a bribery probe into Miklos Sesztak, a former minister under right-wing leader Viktor Orban. The National Asset Recovery and Protection Office said late on Friday that investigators also found cash stored in a high-value safe in a secluded location and in a residential property. The recovered sums comprised 5.07 billion forints ($15.33 million), €2.66 million ($2.93 million) and $1.26 million, and a dozen State Treasury workers needed eight hours to count them using five banknote counters, Finance Minister Andras Karman said.
Sesztak served as Orban's development minister between 2014 and 2018 and has denied wrongdoing; his lawyer, Gabor Papp, did not respond to a request for comment on the recovery office's statement. The discovery comes as Prime Minister Peter Magyar, who ousted Orban after 16 years in power in an April election, pursues a sweeping anti-corruption drive that he has dubbed "Operation Purgatory". Magyar has pledged to mend ties with the European Union, which were marred by years of conflict under Orban, and said the recovered cash signalled the end of what he described as a "mafia" led by Orban's Fidesz party and its Christian Democrat allies.S1
The clampdown has reached other figures from the former government. Two former ministers from Orban's administration and former central bank chief Gyorgy Matolcsy are under arrest over graft accusations in separate investigations, all of whom have denied wrongdoing. Authorities have also detained Orban's brother in a people-smuggling case, which the former leader dismissed as political revenge. A Median poll released on news website HVG this week found 70% of respondents considered the operation "very important".S1
Political analysts see the scale of the seizure as damaging for Fidesz. Political scientist Gabor Torok said the images of large piles of cash were so vivid that they likely spelled doom for the party, whose public support, according to a Median survey, had halved to just 16% of voters by November from levels before the vote.S1
