Hungarian investigators raided a facility hosting Fidesz’s servers on Tuesday as part of a criminal investigation into more than HUF 17 billion—approximately €46 million—in grants awarded by the National Cultural Fund (NKA) ahead of the 12 April election.
Fidesz communications director Bertalan Havasi said investigators had arrived without warning with the intention of seizing the party’s ‘entire communications system and databases’. He described the operation as unprecedented since the end of communism in 1990 and accused the governing Tisza Party of attempting to disable former prime minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz through legal means after failing to overcome what he called ‘political resistance’ to the government.
The Bács-Kiskun County Chief Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that the operation was connected to an investigation into suspected misappropriation and other offences at the NKA, but disclosed neither an inventory of the materials seized nor an explanation of the data being sought. It therefore remains unclear whether the authorities removed the party’s entire technical infrastructure, copied selected material or seized only specified servers. No Fidesz party official was immediately named as a new suspect.
Responding to the raid, Prime Minister Péter Magyar wrote in a post on Facebook that he was awaiting information from prosecutors about the case and the materials that had been confiscated. Tisza rejects allegations that it is directing criminal proceedings against its opponents, arguing that independent authorities must be allowed to investigate suspected corruption.
The NKA investigation began following allegations that state cultural grants had been distributed through an opaque process to artists, organizations and public figures connected to Fidesz. Prosecutors allege that, beginning in December 2024, an NKA decision-making body exceeded its authority and violated legal and internal rules when approving 1,079 grants worth more than HUF 17 billion, thereby causing an equivalent amount of financial damage.
Six officials involved in assessing the applications were detained and questioned in June on suspicion of particularly serious misappropriation. They deny any wrongdoing.
Fidesz maintains that the approximately 1,100 grants were lawful, publicly documented and awarded to organizations conducting genuine cultural programmes, many of them outside Budapest. The party says that all recipients are required to account for the money and portrays the investigation as politically motivated retaliation.
Critics of the former government contend that the grants were used to reward politically aligned cultural figures, potentially finance Fidesz-linked political activity or, in some cases, support overt campaigning for Orbán’s re-election.
The raid comes amid the new government’s broader effort to dismantle what Magyar has described as ‘the political and economic mafia’ built around Orbán and Fidesz during their 16 years in power.
Under the codename ‘Operation Purgatory’, Tisza’s parliamentary supermajority has already passed the 17th constitutional amendment, granting constitutional status to a new asset-recovery and anti-corruption super-agency with prosecutorial powers. The amendment also enabled the removal of President Tamás Sulyok and several remaining Orbán-era officeholders, while introducing a 12-year term limit for MPs.
Fidesz and Sulyok have argued that the rapid and specifically targeted removal of officeholders has weakened due process and established dangerous constitutional precedents.
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