Hungarian authorities recover nearly $20 million in buried cash in probe of former minister

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian authorities have recovered nearly $20 million in cash, some buried in forests or hidden in farm buildings and warehouses, in a bribery investigation into Miklos Sesztak, a minister under former leader Viktor Orban.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Peter Magyar ousted Orban after 16 years in power in an April election, pledging to mend ties with the European Union strained by years of disagreements under Orban, and to launch a sweeping investigation into allegations of graft.

The clampdown is part of an anti-graft drive the center-right Magyar has dubbed “Operation Purgatory,” which 70 percent of respondents rated as “very important” in a survey by the pollster Median carried by news website HVG this week.

“During searches, investigators found large amounts of cash buried in forests, hidden in farm buildings, warehouses and a residential property, and stored in a high-value safe in a secluded location,” the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office says.

Finance Minister Andras Karman says it took a dozen State Treasury workers eight hours using banknote counters to count the cash that had been retrieved.

Magyar says the recovered cash signaled the end of what he describes as a “mafia” led by Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party and his Christian Democrat allies during Orban’s 16-year rule.

Fidesz writes in a Facebook post that it hoped Sesztak was not connected to the cash.

“Since the change of regime, every lawmaker in Hungary has sworn an oath to abide by and enforce the law. Fidesz-KDNP (Christian Democrats) cannot associate itself with anyone who fails to do so. We trust that the images published by the NVVH (asset recovery office) have nothing to do with Miklos Sesztak,” Fidesz writes.

Sesztak — Orban’s development minister from 2014 to 2018 — has denied wrongdoing. His lawyer, Gabor Papp, did not respond to a request for comment on the recovery office’s statement. But he told local news website Telex that the seized cash did not belong to Sesztak, a member of parliament’s Economic and Energy Affairs Committee. He added that the bribery case also involved other suspects.