Hungarian investigators find $19.5 million in cash buried in forests and hidden in farm buildings in a probe of an Orbán-era minister

Cash in the woods

Hungarian investigators have found nearly $20 million in cash hidden across the country during a corruption probe into a minister who served under Viktor Orbán, the BBC and Al Jazeera reported on Saturday. The National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH), a new agency set up to investigate suspected misuse of public money, said searches took place on 12 and 13 November in Budapest and three other parts of Hungary.

Investigators found banknotes in farm buildings, warehouses, a home and “a high-value safe in a secluded location”, and dug more out of the ground in forests, Al Jazeera reported. The agency released footage of officers digging outdoors after dark. The haul amounted to “5,071,632,000 forints, €2,658,350 and $1,257,100”, the office said, about $19.5 million in all, and it has been deposited with the Hungarian State Treasury. Finance Minister Andras Karman said 12 treasury employees spent eight hours counting it, according to Al Jazeera.

The minister

The probe concerns Miklós Seszták, Hungary’s development minister from 2014 to 2018. He is suspected of receiving more than $37.2 million in bribes and kickbacks linked to overpriced second-hand bus purchases by a state transport company and to government construction projects, Al Jazeera reported. He denies any wrongdoing, the BBC said.

Seszták, another former minister and the former central bank governor Gyorgy Matolcsy have been under arrest since September in separate graft cases, the BBC reported. All of them deny wrongdoing. On Monday the authorities also detained Orbán’s brother and three others in a people-smuggling case.

Magyar’s promise

Péter Magyar, whose centre-right, pro-European Tisza party ended Orbán’s 16 years in power in a landslide election in April, campaigned on a sweeping anti-corruption drive. On Facebook on Friday he said the find signalled the end of what he called the “Fidesz-KDNP mafia”, Al Jazeera reported.

Orbán has accused the new government of using the investigations to drive him out of politics. Reacting to his brother’s detention, he said, according to the BBC:

“In this dirty game, the aim is the elimination of the political opponent and the establishment of a one-party system.”

Viktor Orbán, former prime minister of Hungary, BBC News World(translated)

A Median poll published this week by the news site HVG found that 70 percent of respondents considered investigating suspected corruption under Orbán very important, Al Jazeera reported.