For sixteen years, Hungary’s prosecution service was accused of looking the other way when Viktor Orbán’s circle came under suspicion. On Tuesday the country got a new man at its head, and he opened with an apology. Péter Fejes, a 65-year-old career prosecutor who retired only last year, told lawmakers he regretted choices his office had made, and cases it had simply left untouched, which he said had understandably angered ordinary Hungarians.
The vote itself was lopsided. Behind closed ballots Fejes collected 139 yes votes and six no votes, while Orbán’s Fidesz and its partner KDNP boycotted. Tisza, the party of new premier Péter Magyar, has enjoyed a supermajority in the chamber since beating Orbán in April. Fejes was sworn in straight afterwards for a nine-year term and promised an office that is “free from politics”.
He was not the first choice. The head of state, András Baka, saw his earlier pick rejected in October once reports linked that man’s brother to what Hungarians call the “golden convoy” affair, in which Hungarian officers stopped cash and gold being moved by a Ukrainian state bank shortly before the election. Fejes previously served as deputy chief prosecutor in Vas County in western Hungary.
Magyar greeted the result on Facebook with a blunt message: “Tremble, burglars!” His government has listed more than 60 suspected cases involving billions of euros of public money. Behind bars already: three ex-ministers, György Matolcsy among them, who once ran the central bank and was praised by Orbán as his right-hand man.
Nobody expects quick verdicts. Even the country’s new anti-corruption chief, Anna Unger, is lowering expectations and says court rulings may be years away. Orbán calls the investigations a political vendetta. For Fejes, the first test will be whether old files, closed under his predecessors, are quietly reopened.
