Money Buried in a Forest: Hungary Seizes 17.5 Million Euros in Probe Into Former Orbán Minister

The investigators dug at night, in a forest, with shovels. What they pulled out of the ground, out of farm buildings, warehouses, a residential property and an expensive safe at a hidden location, adds up to around 17.5 million euros in cash. Hungarian authorities said the money was found in the investigation into Miklós Szeszták, the former minister of national development in Viktor Orbán's government.

The haul is almost a bank's worth of currencies: more than five billion forints, around 2.6 million euros and 1.2 million dollars. The searches lasted two days, in Budapest and in three Hungarian counties. When the money was handed over, 12 employees of the State Treasury counted it for eight hours, with five banknote-counting machines. The footage of investigators kneeling beside piles of wrapped banknotes while shovels dig in the dark was published by the institution itself.

Szeszták is suspected of taking more than 33 million euros in bribes and illegal commissions linked to the purchase of vehicles for the state bus company and to state construction projects. He was detained at the end of September. The investigation is led by the National Office for Asset Recovery and Protection - a body the new government set up recently, with investigative powers and the right to prosecute in cases of misused public money.

"As of today, Orbán is a proven mafia boss"

Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose Tisza party beat Fidesz in the April election, didn't wait for a court to deliver a verdict. "As of today, Viktor Orbán is a proven mafia boss. A fallen mafia boss. And Fidesz is a criminal organisation," he wrote on Facebook. Strong words from a prime minister - and for now Szeszták is a suspect, not a convict. The seizure is a fact; "proven" is a political word, and that needs saying out loud.

The forest haul isn't the new government's only move. On Monday, police detained Orbán's younger brother in an investigation into suspected human trafficking and influence peddling. Former central bank governor György Matolcsy is also in custody, over suspected abuse of the central bank's foundation, which was given 288 billion forints, around 740 million euros of public money. Orbán, after 16 years in power, calls all the investigations a political "tyranny" aimed at removing him from the political stage.

Budapest isn't far from Skopje

For a Macedonian reader, Orbán is no stranger. His Hungary was the country that granted asylum to Nikola Gruevski in 2018, after he fled a prison sentence in Macedonia. Now the new government in Budapest is digging the money of Orbán's ministers out of the ground and counting it with machines, on camera. How many times have we heard the promise "there will be prison sentences" after a change of government in the Balkans - and how many times has anyone actually picked up a shovel?

The next step is the courtroom. That's where we'll see whether 17.5 million euros buried in a forest turn into a verdict, or stay the most-watched video on Hungarian Facebook.