Hungary is launching an internal investigation into the actions of the tax service, the Counter-Terrorism Center and other agencies during the detention of Ukrainian collectors and the seizure of assets of JSC Oschadbank. This was reported by Reuters.
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said that the prosecutor general should immediately join the investigation. This is an incident on March 5, when Oschadbank collectors were detained in Hungary and money and gold were seized that were being transported from Austria to Ukraine.
The collectors were released the following evening. On March 12, Ukraine returned the bank’s cars, but negotiations over the valuable assets took longer. On May 6, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Budapest had returned the money and gold to Kyiv.
At the time of the incident, the government of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was in conflict with Kyiv. Orban criticized support for Ukraine during the election campaign and blocked new EU sanctions against Russia and the provision of a loan to Kyiv.
In June, Hungarian media reported on Orban’s alleged role in the operation against Ukrainian debt collectors. According to them, the former prime minister could have used the incident as a tool to pressure Kyiv to resume oil supplies through the Druzhba oil pipeline.
Commenting on these reports, Magyar said that Orban controlled the work of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The investigation should establish who made the decisions to detain the debt collectors and seize Oschadbank’s assets.
