Hungarian Prime Minister Accused of Stealing Mobile Phone.. Parliament Lifts Immunity

Listen to the article, the audio text is automatically generated by a machine system.

The Hungarian parliament lifted the immunity of Prime Minister Peter Madiar today, Monday, following accusations of stealing a mobile phone.

The parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the public prosecutor's request to lift Madiar's immunity, who also serves as a member of parliament, with 139 deputies supporting the decision without any opposing votes or abstentions.

Madiar himself had requested the lifting of his immunity, affirming his readiness to cooperate with the investigation in order to clear himself of what he described as a "character assassination," and he considered the case a "farce" and accused his opponents of trying to politically target him.

The case dates back to 2024, when the prosecution accuses Madiar of snatching a mobile phone from a man who was filming him inside a nightclub, before throwing the phone into the Danube River.

At that time, Madiar was a member of the European Parliament, which refused to lift his immunity, before he later resigned from his membership and became a deputy in the Hungarian Parliament following the overwhelming victory of his party "Tisa" in the legislative elections in April 2026.

After his immunity was lifted, it became possible to interrogate Madiar as a suspect and refer him to trial in the case.

Madiar said last week that prosecutors are trying to "mix" his case with those of two former ministers in the government of his predecessor Viktor Orban, considering that what he is facing is "a political character assassination attempt" that has previously failed several times. In the same session, the parliament lifted the immunity of former Minister of Culture Balazs Hanko and former Minister of Development Miklos Szitak, in preparation for investigations into two separate cases against them.

Hanko, a deputy from the "Fidesz" party, is accused of embezzling amounts estimated at more than 46 million US dollars (40 million euros) from public funds, while Szitak, belonging to the Christian Democratic People's Party, is under investigation for accepting bribes worth millions of dollars while he was Minister of National Development between 2014 and 2018.

The two former ministers deny committing any violations, while the "Fidesz" party led by Orban and its ally the Christian Democratic People's Party boycotted the parliamentary session that witnessed the vote to lift the immunity of the three figures.