US imposes sanctions on close associate of Hungary’s Viktor Orban

The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on Antal Rogan, one of the most powerful men in Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government and minister in charge of his cabinet.

The move is unusual among NATO allies and symbolizes the depth to which relations between the United States and Hungary have sunk 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,” read the statement from outgoing US Ambassador David Pressman.

Pressman leaves Budapest next week, after two and a half years as an unusually active diplomat, traveling the country and frequently criticizing Orban’s government.

His departure comes days before Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and the president-elect has a much more positive view of Viktor Orban than the Biden administration, considering him a close political ally.

“While Minister Rogan’s media megaphones will try to make this a story about partisan politics or an affront 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 the kleptocratic ecosystem that Minister Rogan has helped build and lead and from which he has personally benefited.”

The ambassador’s statement was immediately attacked by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

“This is the personal revenge of the ambassador who was sent to Hungary by the failed US administration, but who left unsuccessfully and in disgrace,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook.

“It’s good that in a few days the United States will be led by people who see our country as a friend and not an enemy.”

A former US ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein, also came to Rogan’s defense: “The action of the outgoing ambassador, David Pressman, is an example of the hostile stance of the current US administration towards Hungary, until the last hour.”

The question for the incoming presidency of Trump and his chosen ambassador in Budapest, Matt Whitaker, is whether they will immediately lift the sanctions against Antal Rogan.

The answer is not as obvious as it might seem.

Rogan also oversees the national secret services, and there have been indications from several NATO countries that Hungary is no longer trusted with sensitive information due to the Orban government’s close relations with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

And despite all the expressions of outrage over the decision to impose sanctions on Orban’s chief of staff, several senior figures in the Fidesz establishment have long privately been upset by the lifestyle of Rogan and others, by the power he wields. and the distance with the government. conservative and Christian values ​​that the party so loudly proclaims.