Head of Hungary’s anti-corruption watchdog, Integrity Authority President Ferenc Bíró, has accused senior officials in Viktor Orbán’s former government of attempting to obstruct anti-corruption investigations, while claiming that systemic corruption may have cost Hungary as much as HUF 60 trillion (around €150 billion) over the past 16 years.
In two extensive interviews published over the weekend—one with the civic group DE! Akcióközösség and another with POLITICO Brussels—Bíró described years of political pressure, institutional resistance, criminal proceedings against himself, and alleged intimidation targeting his family while leading Hungary’s anti-corruption watchdog.
The Integrity Authority was established in 2022 as part of reforms agreed with the European Commission to improve oversight of EU funds. According to Bíró, the authority remains a key institution in Hungary’s efforts to unlock EU funding, a process that gained significant momentum in late May when Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s government reached an agreement with the European Commission on the future release of €16.4 billion in previously frozen funds.
Among his most serious allegations, Bíró claimed that in March 2024, he was summoned to the Ministry of Justice after the authority launched an inspection of the National Directorate General for Hospitals.
‘In March 2024, the then justice minister, together with the minister responsible for European affairs, effectively told me not to do my job,’ Bíró said, referring to former Justice Minister Bence Tuzson and former Minister for European Union Affairs János Bóka.
According to Bíró, he interpreted the meeting as an attempt to halt investigations and pressure the authority into presenting a more favourable assessment of Hungary’s fulfilment of EU rule-of-law milestones.
The watchdog president argued that corruption under the previous government had become systemic. Revising an earlier position, he stated: ‘What society understands today as corruption can be said to have been practised at a systemic level.’
‘Bíró also described what he called politically motivated retaliation against himself’
One of the most striking claims in the interviews concerned the overall cost of corruption. Bíró estimated that it may have cost Hungary approximately HUF 60 trillion since 2010. He based the figure on annual state budgets and international research suggesting that corruption-related losses typically amount to around 5 per cent of public spending in well-controlled systems but can rise significantly where oversight mechanisms are weaker. According to Bíró, Hungary’s losses may have increased from around 5 per cent in 2010 to as much as 20 per cent by 2025.
He also cited a number of specific cases investigated by the authority, including alleged irregularities in EU-funded food aid programmes, state communications contracts, railway developments, and ventilator purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Regarding a programme distributing food packages to vulnerable groups, Bíró alleged that roughly HUF 10 billion of a HUF 30 billion project may have been affected by irregularities, adding that ‘taking food out of the mouths of the poor is the lowest of the low’.
In the POLITICO interview, Bíró said his office had identified multiple cases in which Hungary should seek to recover misused EU funds. He argued that ‘high-level politicians can and may well be prosecuted’ and said authorities should work to repatriate money that had allegedly left the country through corrupt schemes.
Bíró also described what he called politically motivated retaliation against himself, including criminal proceedings related to the use of an official vehicle and what he characterized as attempts to intimidate his family.
‘Justice should be done and people should get back what was stolen from them’
He urged the new government to prioritize anti-corruption efforts and asset recovery. ‘One of the key mandates that this landslide victory is built on is fighting corruption and recovering funds,’ he told POLITICO. ‘Justice should be done, and people should get back what was stolen from them.’
Responding to the allegations, a European Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that the EU has ‘zero tolerance for fraud against the EU budget’ and that misappropriated funds must be recovered wherever irregularities are identified.
At the time of writing, neither Fidesz nor the former ministers in question, Bence Tuzson and János Bóka, had publicly responded to the accusations.
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