US sanctions close aide of Hungary’s Viktor Orban
The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on Antal Rogan, one of the most powerful figures in Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government and the minister in charge of his cabinet office.
It is a rare move between NATO allies, and it symbolizes the depths to which U.S.-Hungarian relations have fallen since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
“Antal Rogan is the primary architect, implementer, and beneficiary of this system of corruption,” said the statement by outgoing US Ambassador David Pressman.
After spending two and a half years as an unusually active diplomat, traveling the country and frequently criticizing the Orbán government, Pressman leaves Budapest the following week.
His departure comes days before Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and the president-elect has a far more positive view of Viktor Orbán than the Biden administration, viewing him as a close political ally.
“While Minister Rogan’s media megaphone will try to make this a story about partisan politics or an insult to sovereignty, today’s decision is actually the opposite,” Pressman told reporters in Budapest on Tuesday.
“It is not the United States that threatens Hungary’s sovereignty, but rather the majority ecosystem that Minister Rogan has helped create and directs and that he has personally benefited from.”
The ambassador’s statement was immediately attacked by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.
“This is personal revenge for the ambassador who was sent to Hungary by the failed US administration but did not succeed and left in disgrace,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook.
“How wonderful it is that in just a few days the United States will be led by people who see our country as a friend, not an enemy.”
Former US Ambassador to Hungary David Cornstein also came to Rogan’s defence: “Outgoing Ambassador David Pressman’s move is an example of the current US administration’s hostile stance towards Hungary until the last hour.”
The question for the incoming Trump presidency and his chosen ambassador to Budapest, Matt Whitaker, is whether they will immediately reverse the sanctions against Antal Rogan.
The answer is not as obvious as it might seem.
Rogan also oversees domestic secret services, and there have been signals from several NATO countries that Hungary is no longer trusted with sensitive information because of the Orbán government’s close ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
And for all the expressions of outrage over the decision to sanction Orbán’s cabinet chief, many senior figures in the Fidesz establishment had long been privately troubled by the lifestyle of Rogan and others, the power they wield, and their distance from them. Conservative and Christian values which the party promotes very strongly.
