Viktor Orbán has long crossed all permissible boundaries in relations with Ukraine, but the story of the clearly illegal detention of Ukrainian CIT (Cash-in-Transit – Transl.) guards on Hungarian territory and the unjustified seizure of the cargo they were escorting may cost him more than just his political career.
It is well known that Hungary is a member of the European Union, where the same legal norms and principles apply to everyone.
Today, it is already known that the Ukrainian cash collectors were escorting cargo as part of an agreement between Raiffeisenbank (Austria) and Oschadbank (Ukraine) when they were detained by employees of the Hungarian Anti-Terrorist Center.
What was the reason for this, and who exactly gave the order to carry out this operation?
Hungarian authorities have stated that the detained Ukrainians are suspected of involvement in laundering illegally obtained money. But then why were all the “suspects” released after a while and no charges brought against them? If the Hungarians had no grounds for bringing the Ukrainian CIT guards to justice, then why has the illegally seized cargo not been returned to Ukraine to this day?
Today it became known that Máté Kocsis, a member of the Hungarian Parliament and member of Orbán’s Fidesz party, has submitted a draft law that would impose an arrest on the seized currency and material assets of Oschadbank. What draft law are we talking about here? In all civilized countries, the law does not have retroactive effect. A new law cannot apply to legal relationships that occurred in the past. It should also be noted that at the time of the relevant actions, Hungarian special services employees should have been guided by the legislation in force at that time, rather than entering into a criminal conspiracy with politicians who are now trying to pass a new law post factum to justify their illegal actions.
Lawyers in all civilized countries classify such actions by officials as abuse of power or exceeding their authority, which is followed by criminal liability.
Apart from this, information has appeared in the media that representatives of Hungary’s special services tortured detained Ukrainian CIT guards and illegally used special means against them. If this information is confirmed during the investigation, the careers of these Hungarian “law enforcement officers” will end in prison, and if they are lucky and manage to flee the country, their services may be in demand, perhaps in totalitarian Russia or North Korea, where human rights and the law have no meaning.
This concerns the criminal law aspect of this issue.
Once the investigation into this unprecedented incident has been completed, Hungary will face a number of questions from the point of view of civil law.
Firstly, on what legal grounds was the property seized from its rightful owner?
Secondly, by accusing the Ukrainian side of laundering illegally obtained funds, Viktor Orbán’s government has caused significant damage to the business reputation of the Austrian bank Raiffeisenbank, as a counterparty to Ukraine’s Oschadbank.
However, the most damage was caused by Orbán and his officials to Hungary itself, after which the new government will have to make a lot of effort to restore trust in the country and rebuild its reputation.
Oleh Bereziuk,
Institute for Global Politics
Photo: Screenshot from a Hungarian government’s video from the scene
