The US imposes sanctions on a close aide of Hungary’s Viktor Orban
The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on Antal Rogan, one of the most powerful people in Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government and the minister in charge of his cabinet office.
This is a rare move among NATO allies and is symbolic of the deep decline in US-Hungary relations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
“Antal Rogan is the principal architect, implementer and beneficiary of this corrupt system,” said a statement by outgoing US Ambassador David Pressman.
Pressman leaves Budapest next week, after two and a half years as an unusually active diplomat, traveling around the country and frequently criticizing Orban’s government.
His departure comes days before Donald Trump returns to the White House, and the president-elect has a more positive view of Viktor Orban than the Biden administration, seeing him as a close political ally.
“While Minister Rogan’s media megaphones will try to turn this into a story about partisan politics or an affront to sovereignty, the Today’s intention is actually the opposite.”
“It is not the United States that threatens Hungary’s sovereignty, but rather the authoritarian ecosystem that Secretary Rogan has helped build and direct 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 sent unsuccessfully and disgraced by the failed US administration to Hungary,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook.
“How good it will be that in a few days America will be led by people who consider our country a friend, not an enemy.”
Former US ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein, also came to Rogan’s defense: “The move by outgoing ambassador David Pressman is an example of the current US administration’s hostile stance towards Hungary, for to the last hour.”
The question for the incoming presidency of Trump and his chosen ambassador to Budapest, Matt Whitaker, is whether they will immediately lift sanctions against Antal Rogan.
The answer is not as clear as one might think.
Rogan also oversees secret services in the country and there have been signs from several NATO countries that Hungary can no longer be trusted with sensitive information because of Orban’s government’s close ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin .
And for all the expressions of outrage at Orban’s decision to impose sanctions on the head of his cabinet, some senior figures in the Fidesz establishment have long been disgruntled by Rogan’s lifestyle and others, because of the power he wields, as well as the distance from the government. the conservative and Christian values that the party proclaims so loudly.
