Former Hungarian minister of culture arrested on misappropriation charges

Balázs Hankó, the Orbán government's former minister of culture and innovation was taken out of the car in handcuffs by officers of the national tax authority NAV), who then led him into the courtroom on Thursday. According to information obtained by Telex, the former minister was transported Thursday morning from the Cegléd correctional facility to the Kecskemét District Court, where a decision was made about his arrest. “I gave a statement about everything”—this was all the Fidesz-delegated MP said before entering the courtroom.

Hankó is suspected of having participated, in his capacity as minister of culture and innovation under the Fidesz government, in the awarding of hundreds of grants which in effect financed either the Fidesz campaign or the private lives of the recipients.

According to Telex’s reporter at the scene, Balázs Hankó and his defense attorney stepped out of the courtroom on several occasions to review the case files before the ruling was issued. The judge ultimately ordered Balázs Hankó’s arrest for one month, as confirmed to Telex by Marianna Bodó, the spokesperson for the Bács-Kiskun County Chief Prosecutor’s Office. Since an appeal has been filed against the ruling, it is not yet final.

“The prosecutor’s office wouldn’t let me make a statement—so much for freedom of speech,”

Balázs Hankó shouted after he stepped out of the courtroom and was led away by NAV officials.

According to the spokesperson, however, the prosecutor’s office did not prohibit the suspect from making a statement; the suspect should have requested permission to do this in advance, but he failed to do so.

The prosecutor’s office requested that the MP be arrested since he likely faces many years in prison, and also has an extensive network of contacts, which increases the risk of him fleeing or going into hiding. “Furthermore, given that the crimes were organized and carried out in a hierarchical manner over an extended period of time, and there are reasonable grounds to believe that the proceedings could be unlawfully influenced.”

While Hankó has repeatedly claimed that there is a political witch hunt underway against him, his position gradually became increasingly untenable. The Office of the Prosecutor General requested the lifting of his immunity last week, and Parliament voted in favor of it during Monday’s session. After that, Hankó did not attend the plenary session; he spent the entire day in his office with his family, working. On Monday evening, he received a summons from the prosecutor’s office, so he finally went to the NAV building, where he was taken into custody and transported to Kecskemét. He did not make a confession during the five-hour interrogation, but according to his defense attorney, refuted the criminal charges against him point by point in a 25-page statement.

A victim of a political reckoning

Before he was detained, Balázs Hankó gave one more interview, in which he described the proceedings against him as a “cultural-political struggle” and a “political reckoning,” claiming that the goal is to sideline nationally-minded performers and politicians. “The cultural elite has made it clear that I must leave public life,” he said. In his view, the streets have become a battleground of hatred: “Within the space of 500 meters, five people wanted to put me in jail and hurled very ugly insults at me".

During the conversation, the former minister was extremely dismissive of the fact that they had financed numerous programs which, in practice, turned into campaign events for Fidesz politicians. In his view, “it has always been customary for politicians to be invited to cultural programs. I was invited, too. Countless other politicians were also invited to cultural programs.” Now there are Tisza Party MPs attending cultural programs funded by the National Cultural Fund (NKA). So is this campaign financing for the Tisza Party?” asked Hankó, who, generously overlooking the fact that when the grants were awarded, it could not necessarily be assumed that Fidesz would not win the election.

What is this scandal?

The NKA scandal erupted after an employee of the grant administering body (NKTK) of the National Cultural Fund, Gergő Papp, contacted actor-activist Áron Molnár, saying that he was aware of NKA grant payments totalling nearly 17 billion forints, (47.6 million euros) for which neither the decisions nor the members of the decision-making body had been made public. Áron Molnár reported the matter to the public on April 23, stating that the NKA had transferred billions to economic and public circles, as well as artists close to Fidesz. It was after this that the NKA website published a list clearly showing that a large number of artists with close ties to Fidesz had received conspicuously large sums from the NKA’s special cultural fund.

Following the publication of these reports, several members of the committee which had awarded the grants resigned, claiming that they were not only unaware of the payments, but had actually been "duped." According to them, they too were shocked by the list of winning applicants and the amounts awarded; theatre director Attila Vidnyánszky put it bluntly:

“My jaw dropped when I saw how much money had been awarded and who the recipients were.”

In fact, the committee said they had approved a different report on April 23 and had never seen the 34-page NKA document which was later posted on the institution’s website.

The tax authority eventually started to investigate, which led to the arrest of several people. Some of them have since been placed under judicial supervision, while several others remain under arrest.

Although Balázs Hankó was stripped of his parliamentary immunity, he did not lose his seat in Parliament and can remain an MP even if he remains in pretrial detention for months. In other words, as vice chair of the Education Committee, he can continue to receive his monthly gross salary of 2.88 million forints.