Hungary | Prosecutors arrest Orbán's head of the national bank

The former Hungarian economics minister and later central bank chief György Matolcsy is said to have embezzled large sums. Photo: Yves Logghe/AP/dpa Budapest. The Hungarian public prosecutor's office has arrested the long-time National Bank governor from the Orbán era, György Matolcsy, on suspicion of corruption. The once close confidant of right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who was voted out in April, is suspected of economic fraud and document falsification, his lawyer confirmed to the MTI news agency. The lawyer added that he had lodged a complaint against the arrest.

Matolcsy was economics minister in the then Orbán government from 2010 to 2013 and head of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB), the central bank of the central European EU country, from 2013 to 2025. The Chief Public Prosecutor's Office for Central Investigations has not yet brought any specific charges against him, but has arrested other people and carried out house searches at the properties of Matolcsy and other suspects, Hungarian media reported.

The public prosecutor spoke of investigations in connection with the “Causa MNB”. Under Matolcsy's leadership, the MNB founded several foundations intended to promote culture and science and into which it pumped several billion euros. However, some of this money is said to have disappeared. The Hungarian Court of Audit estimated the alleged damage amount in March of the previous year at at least 375 million euros. Matolcsy denied any wrongful conduct. A criminal complaint from the Court of Auditors is said to have ultimately triggered the public prosecutor's investigation.

These began immediately after the parliamentary elections in April, which led to Orbán's fall and the bourgeois Prime Minister Péter Magyar taking over the government. Magyar, who himself comes from Orbán's power party Fidesz, but radically broke with it more than two years ago, had promised during the election campaign to end the rampant corruption under Orbán and to bring those responsible to justice.

Matolcsy, who, as Orbán's comrade-in-arms, liked to present himself as a "mastermind" of "unconventional economic policy," is the most symbolic figure of the Orbán era to date that the judiciary has taken into custody. Former Minister of Culture Balázs Hankó and former Minister of Development Miklás Seszták have been in custody for three weeks. Hankó is said to have misused cultural fund money for election campaign purposes, while Seszták benefited from overpriced procurement of public buses. dpa/nd

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