On Tuesday, after weeks of attacking Orbán online and in public, Magyar released a tape of his ex-wife Varga apparently incriminating members of Orbán’s inner circle in a corruption scandal.

Magyar claims the two-minute recording, taped last year, proves that Orbán’s powerful Cabinet chief Antal Rogán tampered with documents related to a sprawling corruption dispute involving Pál Völner, a former state secretary in the justice ministry when Varga was minister. Völner resigned in 2021 after prosecutors accused him of taking bribes.

The sensational release of the tape — which Magyar presented to the prosecutor’s office in Budapest before a sea of cameras Tuesday — is the latest twist in a drama that has transfixed Hungary and provided a rare moment of dissent against Orbán’s iron grip on the country’s political system.

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  • Dicska@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This is great news and in any civilised country it would be enough to topple the government, or at least knock a few corrupt politicians out of their chair. Too bad it’s playing in Hungary, instead. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still hoping for the best, but there was a similar spark of hope back when one of Orbán’s former oligarchs turned against him. Nothing happened, the propaganda worked and the masses voted for them again.

    Then Gábor Kaleta, the Hungarian Ambassador of Peru was caught having watched terabytes of child pornography on a CP site. While he was actually condemned, he only got one year suspended prison sentence and a laughable amount of fines (considering the crime, the volume and his position): 540K HUF which amounts to ~1360 EUR. Did that make people totally pissed? Not really. The governing party, FIDESZ made a law “against paedophiles” to “protect children and families”, and intentionally mashed paedophiles and gay people together, making bookstores wrap any kind of book that may contain the slightest amount of LGBT topic. Their voters were happy for it.

    Then József Szájer, the MP of the gay bashing, Brussels hating government’s coalition party, KDNP (Christian Democratic People’s Party) was caught trying to escape out of the window, down the gutter pipe from a gay gangbang party, with some kind of drug (Ecstasy?) in his backpack, wearing only underpants. Did Fidesz’s support decrease? Hell, no. They won another 2/3 of the votes on the next election.

    Then (more recently), due to some unlikely luck, someone found out that the President of the Republic pardoned a person who was trying to cover up for the paedophile head of a foster home who abused a dozen kids (these pardons are usually not made public for some reason). Some investigation started and it turned out that she (the PotR) was pressioned by the aforementioned KDNP’s main politicians. For the pardon to take effect, the head of the Ministry of Justice also had to confirm it. Guess what, that person is Judit Varga, the ex wife in the main article. They (the PotR and Varga) both resigned, but the KDNP member refused to. Did that discourage people from supporting FIDESZ? Not the slightest bit. The ones who were never the strongest fans and neutral/opposition voters got outraged by it, understandably. But FIDESZ’s 2/3 was still standing strong. Imagine MAGA level ignorance.

    …aaaaand now, as it turns out, the HEAD of the friggin’ MINISTRY OF JUSTICE knew about this investigation going on about Völner, even warned him to stop, and did absolutely nothing when he even refused to stop. Not just that, but according to the recording, she even knew about the Cabinet chief trying to tamper with sensitive documents and scripts about this case (trying to cut ties to themselves).

    I wonder if the voters are outraged by this more than the fearmongering done by FIDESZ about LGBT people, Soros, immigrants (while they are the ones trying to incorporate/settle Chinese policemen to expand the CCP’s surveillance, Philippino bus drivers, Thai battery factory workers, etc.), the EU, Western European states and a former prime minister (who was and is god awful to date, to be fair) taking over the country and running it into the ground. Considering the past 14 years, I think I could bet money.

    • febra@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Yeah, I was just about to say the same thing. People truly misunderstand the level of political indoctrination going on in Hungary right now. I’d be highly surprised if anyone anyone managed to take Orban down anytime soon. Not without something huge happening, and as it stands now, even a pedophile scandal isn’t big enough for Orban

      • Dicska@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        “I Could … shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters”

        • Orb… I mean Donald Trump.
  • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    The guy’s name is Magyar? This is like an American politician named “Peter American”.

    PS: Orban sucks

  • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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    8 months ago

    To add some quick context to this, because I imagine most people aren’t following internal Hungarian politics day-to-day:

    Last year there was a scandal that had Pál Völner, the Secretary of State for Justice and György Schadl, the president of the Hungarian Court Bailiffs Chamber under investigation for a scheme where Schadl would bribe Völner to only appoint bailiffs loyal to him, and providing kickbacks for him. This happened under the purview of Minister of Justice Judit Varga, though she was not implicated. However, Minister of Government Communication Antal Rogán, his wife and aide were named by their given names in some evidence as the people ultimately responsible for masterminding the scheme. They were never investigated or even questioned, causing much outrage but not much else.

    There was a separate, more recent, scandal that had President Katalin Novák and Minister of Justice Judit Varga resign over it getting out that they pardoned someone who was enabling the systematic sexual abuse of orphaned children in government care. They were most likely just the “signatures”, so they became sacrificial lambs when it got out. The person pardoned is a personal friend of the Orbán family. The whole thing got out because they made a mistake that made the case appear in some procedural jurispondence, which has been spotted by a random low-profile lawyer.

    The ex-husband (divorced two years ago) of Judit Varga, Péter Magyar, came out in an interview to the biggest non-government owned media outlets in protest of the presumed forced resignation over something that was ultimately Rogán’s fault by his account. He recounts that even back in the Völner case, Rogán went over Varga’s head, and they took control away from her in her own Ministry when she started asking questions. He blames Rogán for Varga’s resignation since he is responsible for propaganda, so he made the call to sacrifice Varga to secure the “inner circle’s” reputation. His gripes seem to be that while he was in a privileged position as part of the Orbán system, he was still fucked over when it counted for the “inner circle”.

    And this is where we get to today, where Magyar has revealed recordings having Varga telling him that Rogán and his circle are falsifying investigative material and evidence by removing their names from them.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    8 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Magyar claims the two-minute recording, taped last year, proves that Orbán’s powerful Cabinet chief Antal Rogán tampered with documents related to a sprawling corruption dispute involving Pál Völner, a former state secretary in the justice ministry when Varga was minister.

    The sensational release of the tape — which Magyar presented to the prosecutor’s office in Budapest before a sea of cameras Tuesday — is the latest twist in a drama that has transfixed Hungary and provided a rare moment of dissent against Orbán’s iron grip on the country’s political system.

    “This shows that the justice system is under political influence, that key figures tampered with the investigations, and that Varga knew this,” said opposition politician Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament.

    Varga, who said in February that she was retiring from public life, issued a statement on social media Tuesday saying she was “appalled” by Magyar’s release of the tape, accusing him of blackmail and domestic violence.

    But since the double resignation of Varga and President Katalin Novák in February over a disputed sex-abuse pardon case, Magyar has emerged as a major voice of dissent in Hungary, and has announced plans to form a new political party.

    On March 15, Hungary’s national day, Magyar held an anti-government rally in central Budapest attended by thousands of people, where he accused Fidesz of spending the equivalent of hundreds of millions of euros annually on propaganda.


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