Vice President JD Vance’s close ally in central Europe has been accused of shredding documents on his way out the door following the Hungarian far-right’s humiliating loss in Sunday’s historic election.
Outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was defeated by pro-European Union candidate Péter Magyar in an election that saw record voter turnout—a bruising that came despite Vance flying to Budapest last week to campaign for him.
During a press conference Monday, Magyar said Orbán’s outgoing foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, was allegedly caught destroying documents related to EU sanctions.
The pro-Kremlin minister had become the face of Orbán’s cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, traveling to Moscow more than a dozen times since Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Bloomberg reported.
Many people thought Szijjártó had “disappeared” on Sunday, since he didn’t attend Orbán’s speech earlier in the day, Magyar said, according to Euro News.
“We understand he turned up at the foreign ministry at 10 a.m. this morning,” Magyar said. “The ministry where Russian hackers were let into the computer systems, and they are shredding documents related to sanctions.”
The information came from insider sources at the foreign ministry, where many officials are helping Magyar’s center-right Tisza Party, the incoming premier said.
For weeks, whistleblowers have been sharing “information about astonishing crimes inside the ministries,” he said, and warned that destroying documents “won’t be enough” to stop criminal investigations into Orbán’s regime.
The foreign ministry has not commented on the allegations.
There’s speculation that Szijjártó will flee to Moscow following Sunday’s election.
During the election campaign, leaked transcripts of phone calls between Szijjártó and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov revealed that Szijjártó had volunteered to help dilute EU sanctions against Russia, Bloomberg reported.
He also allegedly briefed Lavrov regularly on the outcome of EU foreign ministers’ meetings.
During a phone call in October, Orbán assured Putin that he was “at your service.”
During Monday’s press conference, Magyar said Hungary would “no longer be a Russian puppet state” and would instead “return to Europe.”
His government plans to work constructively with Brussels to unlock more than $20 billion in frozen EU funds, he added.
His Tisza party won 138 seats in Parliament, while Orbán’s Fidesz won 55 seats, and an extreme-right party won six seats.
Pollsters say that Vance’s campaigning appears to have actually hurt Orbán’s already weak electoral prospects.
