The Operation Purifying Fire has reached the highest circles of the “Fidesz mafia” within a few months, Prime Minister Péter Magyar announced on Wednesday on his Facebook page.
In a video message, the prime minister said that the court had on Wednesday ordered the arrest of Miklós Seszták (KDNP), a member of parliament and former minister of national development — described by the prime minister as “the plunderer of Kisvárda.”
Péter Magyar stressed that for the first time since 1990, there has been a genuine criminal consequence in Hungarian public life for a former government member in relation to what he called “political criminality,” corruption, and mafia-like conduct.
He highlighted that when Operation Purifying Fire was announced, they had promised to rid Hungary of the “all-pervasive political and economic mafia.”
He added that they had committed to tracing the flow of public funds, recovering stolen national assets, and creating the conditions under which criminals who had considered themselves untouchable for decades would also be held accountable.
Wednesday marked an important milestone for Operation Purifying Fire, and the country had taken a huge step along the road to cleansing, he declared. “Viktor Orbán’s former minister is already in custody, and his other minister and member of parliament, Balázs Hankó, is already in the hands of the authorities,” he said.
Péter Magyar said it would soon become clear how long the “Fidesz mafiosi” would keep the “omertà” — the code of silence characteristic of the mafia. He added that it would soon become clear who would testify against the main organizers, and specifically against the mafia boss, in an attempt to save their own skin.
In Hungarian public life, everyone knew about the “corruption crimes” committed by Miklós Seszták — the “KDNP’s Simicska” — in Kisvárda and across the country, he said, sharing his view. It was an open secret to everyone that he had turned Kisvárda into the Felcsút of eastern Hungary, with multi-billion-forint, vastly overpriced, and pointless investments “that served a single purpose for him: to be able to steal from them,” said the prime ministerial candidate. “But he didn’t only steal locally — casino concessions in Győr and Pécs fell into the laps of his family members and business partners, and the lakeside sports ground and campsite at Balaton didn’t escape Seszták’s greed either; those were taken too, just as billions were taken from the aquatics world championship,” he listed his observations.
Fidesz is now “desperately scrambling, deflecting and threatening,” inciting against prosecutors, police officers and honest investigators, he said. The “fallen mafia” is threatening them precisely because they know full well what everyone in Hungary can see: that Miklós Seszták and Balázs Hankó “are not lone criminals, but members of a political and economic mafia,” he said.
He noted that meanwhile the “mafia boss is terrified” that his two former ministers and servants are only the first swallows.
While the dominoes of the NER are falling one after another, and it may have become clear to everyone that Fidesz ministers and MPs, together with Balázs Hankó, “conducted an electoral campaign within a criminal organisation, using billions of public funds, committing prohibited party and campaign financing,” the State Audit Office — “whose leader, appointed and kept in place by Fidesz, is keeping his head down as usual and has not a single word to say about the open violations of the law that have been going on for at least a year” — he said.
Perhaps it also needs no separate explanation why Mi Hazánk — “operating as a lifeboat for the collapsing Fidesz mafia” — and party president László Toroczkai do not have a single word to say about the results of Operation Tisztítótűz and the NER corruption crimes involving tens and hundreds of billions of public funds that are coming to light day by day, he added.
Addressing the “hiding Turkish emperor,” former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and his “terrified criminal politician associates,” he said: give back the Hungarians’ diamond halfpenny, and take note that by drawing up lists of prosecutors and police officers, they will not be able to stop Operation Tisztítótűz.
Péter Magyar also stressed that they will protect the investigators, the prosecutors, the judges, and the staff of the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office.
He went on to say that dismantling such a network requires the determination of the entire country — the expertise of investigators, the courage of prosecutors, professional customs officers, and the persistence of journalists. Witnesses are also needed, he said — those who until now had not dared to share what they knew or had experienced — while he urged everyone to preserve documents, hand them over to the authorities, and help uncover who made the decisions, who made demands, who acted as an intermediary, who paid, and who profited and by how much.
“Long live the homeland, and may that purifying fire burn bright” — he closed his video message, in the background of which the theme from the film *The Godfather* could be heard.
Artificial intelligence was used for the translation of parts of the original Hungarian text.