The Attorney General of Hungary requested on Tuesday the lifting of parliamentary immunity of Prime Minister Peter Magyar and, in other cases, the lifting of immunity of two former ministers from the government of former nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, reports France Presse.
These announcements by the acting Attorney General Istvan Lajtar constitute, in addition to the case targeting the current Prime Minister, the first announcements regarding the initiation of legal proceedings against high-ranking officials from the Orban era.
Peter Magyar, a pro-European conservative who came to power after his party Tisza’s victory in the parliamentary elections in April, ending the 16-year rule of nationalist Viktor Orban, is the target of a theft investigation, in connection with an incident from 2024 where he is accused of taking a man’s phone who was filming him while he was in a club and throwing it into the Danube.
Magyar has denounced this investigation as a “disgrace”.
Last year, the European Parliament refused to lift his immunity as a Member of the European Parliament.
Viktor Orban’s ministers, accused of corruption acts
The investigation concerning Balazs Hanko, a deputy of Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party and former Minister of Culture and Innovation, refers to the alleged embezzlement of 47 million euros from public funds, money that would have been used primarily for financing the 2026 election campaign.
Investigators seized the party’s servers in July, prompting Viktor Orban to denounce the procedures as an attempt to harm the political formation.
And Miklos Sesztak, a deputy from the KDNP party, allied with Fidesz, and former Minister of National Development in Orban’s government, is suspected of receiving millions of euros in bribes during the acquisition of second-hand buses at inflated prices between 2014 and 2018.
These developments come in a context where Peter Magyar and the new president appointed by his own majority, Andras Baka, former president of the Supreme Court, have entered into conflict over the name of the next attorney general.
The former attorney general resigned in July, under the pressure of the new majority, which campaigned on a platform to combat corruption.