Hungary lifts immunity of Prime Minister Magyar, two Orban-era ministers

Hungary’s Parliament has stripped Prime Minister Peter Magyar and two ministers in former leader Viktor Orban’s nationalist government of their immunity, clearing the way for prosecutors to pursue separate criminal investigations into each of them.

The vote on Monday came after Magyar, who is being investigated for theft, specifically asked for his immunity to be lifted so he could clear himself of “character assassination”. The probes against the Orban-era ministers – who are suspected of embezzlement and bribery – are the first corruption investigations against top government figures from Orban’s 16 years in power.

Legislators voted overwhelmingly in favour of lifting their immunity.

Orban’s Fidesz party and its ally KDNP boycotted the session.

The vote was in response to a request last week from prosecutors seeking to investigate Magyar, as well as former Minister of Culture Balazs Hanko and former Minister of National Development Miklos Sesztak.

Magyar is being investigated over an incident at a Budapest nightclub in June 2024, when prosecutors allege he took a mobile phone from a man filming him and threw it into the Danube River.

Magyar has called the case a “sham” and last week accused prosecutors of trying “to conflate” the ex-ministers’ cases “with the attempt at political character assassination… which has already failed several times”.

Corruption cases

Hanko, a legislator from Orban’s Fidesz party, is accused of embezzling more than 40 million euros ($46m) in public funds. Prosecutors allege the money was used to help finance the 2026 parliamentary election campaign and for the personal benefit of others.

Sesztak, a lawmaker from KDNP, is under investigation over allegedly accepting more than $37.2m in bribes and kickbacks connected to vehicle procurements under Hungary’s state bus company, as well as to state construction projects.

Both ministers deny any wrongdoing.

The cases come less than six months after Magyar’s Tisza party ended Orban’s 16 years in power with a landslide election victory. Magyar campaigned on pledges to tackle corruption, restore rule-of-law safeguards, and rebuild Hungary’s strained relationship with the European Union.

His government has since made fighting alleged corruption and overpriced public procurement a central part of its programme, including plans for a new asset-recovery office focused on wrongdoing linked to the Orban era.