Hungary detains Orbán's brother. Will Viktor Orbán himself be arrested this year?
Hungarian police detained Áron Orbán, brother of former prime minister Viktor Orbán, on 9 November. Viktor Orbán says he is the real target.
What happened
Hungarian authorities have detained a brother of Viktor Orbán in a people-smuggling investigation, Prime Minister Péter Magyar said.
Hungarian police detained four people on in a people-smuggling case. Police say that in 2024 the four helped more than 100 Vietnamese citizens get Hungarian visas for a fee, so they could reach western Europe. Prime Minister Péter Magyar said one of them was Áron Orbán, younger brother of former prime minister Viktor Orbán. His lawyer confirmed that police took him into custody and said he has complained against it.
Viktor Orbán lost power in April after 16 years. Magyar won after he promised to investigate corruption under Orbán, and in May he set up a new anti-corruption office. Since three of Orbán’s former ministers have been taken into custody, among them former central bank governor György Matolcsy. All of them deny wrongdoing.
Viktor Orbán himself has not been named a suspect. He wrote “I am the real target”. He did not take his seat in the new parliament, so since he has had no immunity as a member of parliament, and police need no vote in parliament to arrest him.
The next steps have no date. Police have asked a court to order the four arrested. In September Magyar told impatient voters that justice does not simply put people in prison, and that the first ten minutes of a film are not always the best part.
Sources: The Guardian (2), Telex (2, 3, 4, 5)
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a new government took power through an election or a vote in parliament, and then police or a court detained someone close to the former leader: a minister, deputy minister, head of a state office, close adviser or relative. We found ten such changes of power, from Taiwan in 2008 to Poland in 2024, and one of them was in Hungary in 2011. (Index; The Guardian; The Guardian; The Guardian)
Show the other 8 cases
The Read
Past arrests of a former leader came either fast or after months. In Bulgaria in 2022 Boyko Borisov was detained on the same day as his former finance minister. In Taiwan in 2008 a court ordered Chen Shui-bian kept in custody 12 days after his former security chief was arrested. The next two came after 226 days in Ukraine and 273 days in Pakistan. Hungary’s first arrests of Orbán’s former ministers came on , so is day 43 and is day 94, in the gap between those times.
There are reasons for doubt. Borisov was freed within 24 hours without charges. In Sri Lanka in 2015 the former president’s brother was the first one arrested, yet Mahinda Rajapaksa was not detained, and his family won power back in 2019. Other facts point the other way. Since May Hungary has had a new office that looks into past misuse of public money. Two open matters lead to Orbán himself: a complaint to police about his threats against that office’s staff, and a former senior prosecutor’s claim, made through his lawyer, that in the matter of detained Ukrainian cash couriers prosecutors acted on Orbán’s personal order.
Sources: RFE/RL, The Guardian (2, 3, 4), Al Jazeera (2), Telex (2)
Disclaimer
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