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The National Asset Recovery and Protection Office disclosed that investigators uncovered large sums of cash during searches spanning two days in Budapest and the counties of Pest, Békés and Nógrád as part of proceedings against former national development minister Miklós Seszták. The haul, buried in forests or concealed in farm buildings, warehouses, residential properties and a high-value safe at a secluded site, totalled 5.07 billion forints, €2.66 million and $1.26 million. Finance Minister Andras Karman stated that 12 State Treasury workers needed eight hours and five banknote counters to tally the recovered notes before depositing them into the state account.
Seszták, who held the development portfolio from 2014 to 2018 under then-prime minister Viktor Orbán, faces accusations of accepting more than $37 million in bribes tied to inflated purchases of secondhand buses for state transport firms and related construction projects. He was detained in late September following the lifting of his parliamentary immunity and has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on the latest findings, according to multiple agencies that tracked the case.
The recovery marks a prominent step in Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s anti-corruption campaign, dubbed Operation Purgatory, which he launched after defeating Orbán in April elections and pledging to address years of alleged graft during the previous administration’s 16-year tenure. A Median pollster survey released this week on the HVG news site found that 70 percent of respondents viewed the drive as very important. Magyar described the cash discovery as signalling the end of what he called a mafia operated by Orbán’s Fidesz party and its Christian Democrat allies.
Separate graft investigations have resulted in the arrest of two additional former Orbán ministers along with former central bank governor György Matolcsy, all of whom have denied involvement in any illicit activity. Authorities additionally detained Orbán’s brother in a people-smuggling probe, a move the former prime minister dismissed as political retaliation. These developments have halved support for Fidesz to around 16 percent in recent polling, according to political analysts cited across reporting on the inquiries.
The newly created National Asset Recovery and Protection Office holds both investigative and prosecutorial authority to pursue misuse of public funds, a mechanism established under the current government to recover assets and pursue accountability. Seszták’s case centres on alleged kickbacks from state contracts that prosecutors say bypassed standard procedures and favoured connected parties. The office released video footage showing piles of bundled notes and nighttime digging operations at forested locations to document the scale of the finds.
Public reaction has included widespread attention to the counting process detailed by Karman, underscoring the volume of physical currency involved in the alleged schemes. The operation forms one element of a wider effort that has already prompted criminal complaints totalling billions of forints in suspected corruption from the Orbán era. Hungarian officials continue to pursue additional leads stemming from whistleblower accounts and financial audits of former state entities.
