The 10 Worst Criminal Cases Viktor Orbán Leaves Behind in Hungary
Billions in embezzled contracts, EU secrets leaked directly to Moscow, a devastated media landscape, corruption as the basic lifeblood of government - the task facing Hungary post-Orbán is monstrous.
Péter Magyar was sworn in as Hungary’s prime minister on 9 May 2026. Viktor Orbán, who had held power for 16 years left without ceremony.
Magyar inherited, in the language of Hungary’s own investigative press, a captured state. Under Orbán’s Fidesz party, institutions had been systematically redirected to enrich a narrow circle of loyalists. Intelligence services had been turned against journalists and EU fraud investigators. The machinery of justice had been quietly disabled.
Magyar’s first speech as prime minister showed the scale of the task. One of his first pieces of legislation will be the creation of a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office to uncover and retrieve stolen or embezzled funds. He gave a 31 May 31 deadline to the chief prosecutor, the presidents of the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court, and the heads of the Media Authority and other bodies filled by Fidesz to resign. He committed Hungary to joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), the body with the power to investigate fraud against EU funds directly in member states, which Orbán had spent years keeping Hungary out of.
The ten cases below are the largest that must now be investigated from the Orbán years. Some are systemic, such as a decades-long EU funds fraud operation involving billions of euros and dozens of connected firms. Others are specific, such as a street lighting company owned by the prime minister’s son-in-law or a foreign minister who appears to have been briefing the Kremlin during breaks in EU Council meetings.
As of 13 May, none of the principals have been charged. The only active investigation was opened on 28 April “against unknown perpetrators,” after reports that Orbán-era oligarchs had begun moving assets to the Gulf in the weeks following the election.
But an architecture of accountability is being built.
1. Systematic EU funds fraud and the capture of public procurement
This is the case that contains all others. Everything else flows from the same central mechanism: the state as a distribution vehicle for a private oligarchy.
