When Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga resigned abruptly last month, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán lost one of his star protégés.
The media-savvy Varga had been due to lead Orbán’s right-wing Fidesz party into the European election and was one of the best-known Hungarian politicians in Brussels.
But as she has retreated from the spotlight, her ex-husband, former Fidesz official Péter Magyar, has emerged as a real thorn in Orbán’s side.
On Tuesday, after weeks of attacking Orbán online and in public, Magyar released a tape of his ex-wife Varga apparently incriminating members of Orbán’s inner circle in a corruption scandal.
Magyar claims the two-minute recording, taped last year, proves that Orbán’s powerful Cabinet chief Antal Rogán tampered with documents related to a sprawling corruption dispute involving Pál Völner, a former state secretary in the justice ministry when Varga was minister. Völner resigned in 2021 after prosecutors accused him of taking bribes.
The sensational release of the tape — which Magyar presented to the prosecutor’s office in Budapest before a sea of cameras Tuesday — is the latest twist in a drama that has transfixed Hungary and provided a rare moment of dissent against Orbán’s iron grip on the country’s political system.
“This shows that the justice system is under political influence, that key figures tampered with the investigations, and that Varga knew this,” said opposition politician Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament.
“This is very clear evidence that the Hungarian justice system is not free and not independent,” she added. “It is also one of the first cases when someone from Orbán’s inner circle has spoken out.”
A spokesman for the Hungarian government, Zoltán Kovács, dismissed Magyar’s claims, accusing the former Fidesz official of harrassing his ex-wife.
Varga, who said in February that she was retiring from public life, issued a statement on social media Tuesday saying she was “appalled” by Magyar’s release of the tape, accusing him of blackmail and domestic violence.
She said she had been “terrorized” by her then-husband, and had told him what he wanted to hear on the tape.
Magyar, a former Fidesz apparatchik and trained lawyer, is best known as Varga’s ex-husband.
The couple, who share three children, was often cast as a model nuclear family in glossy magazine features in a country whose government prizes “traditional” family values. Magyar, who served on state boards and worked in various roles for the administration, including in Brussels during Hungary’s last EU presidency, previously spoke about stepping back from his career to look after their young children when Varga’s career was taking off.
Following their divorce last year, Varga had been expected to move to Brussels as an MEP after the European election.
But since the double resignation of Varga and President Katalin Novák in February over a disputed sex-abuse pardon case, Magyar has emerged as a major voice of dissent in Hungary, and has announced plans to form a new political party.
In February he resigned from the board of MBH Bank, accusing Orbán’s government of “hiding behind the skirts of women” by effectively scapegoating Varga and Novák. The former president had pardoned a man who had forced children to retract allegations of abuse by the director of a children’s home, while Varga had signed off on the pardon.
On March 15, Hungary’s national day, Magyar held an anti-government rally in central Budapest attended by thousands of people, where he accused Fidesz of spending the equivalent of hundreds of millions of euros annually on propaganda.
Magyar said he had tried to convince Varga to accompany him to the prosecutor’s office; he was slated to give media interviews and hold another rally following the tape’s release later on Tuesday.
Despite Magyar’s rapid emergence as a political force, Hungary’s opposition has until now failed to dent Orbán’s grip on the country’s politics. In the last parliamentary election in April 2022, its disparate opposition forces rallied around a single figure, Péter Márki-Zay, who ran on an anti-Fidesz platform. Orbán’s party was ultimately returned for a fourth consecutive term.
According to opposition MEP Cseh, Magyar’s intervention could signal a broader push against Orbán.
“Many people are beginning to think that something is starting to crumble within the system,” she said. “I hope that more former government insiders speak out and embrace the fact that there is life outside the system. There is a great need for them to take this risk.”