Hungarian Parliament: Removal of immunity for Gyurcsány and two former Orbán ministers
Hungary's parliament voted to remove the immunity of Prime Minister Péter Gyurcsány and two former ministers in separate criminal cases.
Hungary's parliament removes immunity for Gyurcsány, Hanko and Széstak
Hungary's parliament today removed the immunity of three lawmakers involved in separate criminal cases: Prime Minister Péter Gyurcsány and two former ministers from Viktor Orbán's government. According to In.gr, 139 of the 199 parliamentarians approved the removal, whilst Orbán's Fidesz party and its ally KDNP boycotted the vote.
The country's general prosecutor had requested the previous week the removal of immunity for all three in order to continue its investigations. For the two former ministers, these are the first prosecutions of high-ranking officials from the Orbán era for corruption cases.
Gyurcsány, a pro-European prime minister of Hungary, is accused of an incident dating from 2024: he is alleged to have snatched a mobile telephone from a man who was filming him in a nightclub and thrown it into the Danube. He himself had requested the removal of his immunity, characterising the case for some time as a "farce". The previous week he accused the general prosecutor of attempting to link his case with those of the former ministers, as APE-MPE recalled.
Former Minister of Culture and Innovation Balás Hanko is accused of embezzling 47 million euros of public funds, part of which is alleged to have been used for Fidesz's pre-election campaign for the 2026 elections.
Former Minister of Development Miklós Széstak, a KDNP parliamentarian, is alleged to have received several million euros in bribes in connection with the purchase of used buses at inflated prices between 2014 and 2018.
Source: In.gr