Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán personally ordered a raid on Oschadbank cash collectors who were transporting cash and investment gold from Austria to Ukraine. From a professional standpoint, there were no grounds for this.
This is stated in an investigation conducted by the Hungarian news portal Telex.
The portal noted that on March 5, 2026, two Oschadbank vans were transporting a shipment of cash and gold from Austria to Ukraine. The convoy was traveling along a well-known transit route that the Ukrainian side had been using since the start of the full-scale invasion by the aggressor country, russia. However, the Ukrainians were intercepted and stopped by a police car. They stopped at a rest area in Alatsk, where fighters from the Counter-Terrorism Center (Terrorelhárítási Központ, TEK) were already waiting for them.
The incident, which became public knowledge the following day, caused a serious international outcry. Orbán’s government boasted about the spectacular raid, posting a TEK video on its official Facebook page. Government propaganda hinted that the Ukrainians were transporting money and gold illegally.
Later, János Lázár, Hungary’s then-Minister of Construction and Transport, stated that in Budapest “we don’t know who sent this money or why, but we won’t return it.” His remarks came after Orbán enacted legislation stipulating that Ukraine would not receive the money or gold for two months until the investigation was completed.
At the same time, Hungary’s National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) opened a case on suspicion of money laundering, but the Austrian Central Bank reacted to these allegations with surprise. Vienna stated that the transport of cash between countries is a common and legal banking practice. Austrian authorities also found no violations or illegal actions related to the transport.
Telex notes that the situation changed after Orbán’s party, Fidesz, suffered a defeat in the elections held in Hungary in early April.
After the elections, NAV returned the seized property to Ukraine, disregarding Orbán’s decree. In addition, the Hungarian authorities lifted the eviction order imposed on the Ukrainian cash collectors, as well as the entry and residence bans. At that point, it became clear that the prosecutor, who had access to classified documents, believed that the migration proceedings had not presented sufficient evidence to indicate a threat to national security posed by Ukrainians.
Over the course of several weeks, Telex spoke with numerous sources who were directly or indirectly involved in this case or had a clear understanding of the background to the events.
"Although these participants—seeking to shift the blame—regularly blamed one another during conversations, their accounts coincided on one point. Namely, that the actions against the ‘gold convoy’ were initiated by the authorities only on paper; political calculations were behind the operation, and they merely facilitated the execution of the will of higher-ups,” the portal writes.
The date of the raid on the cash collectors was also not coincidental. Orbán was convinced that Ukrainians, for political reasons, were not allowing oil to flow to Hungary through the “Druzhba” pipeline—which had been damaged by russian shelling—rather than because they were unable to repair the damaged pipeline.
According to one source familiar with the internal affairs of the previous government, Orbán insisted on carrying out the raid against the collectors. This was his way of retaliating against Ukraine for the situation with the Druzhba pipeline.
"We will win, and we will win by force; there will be no compromises; we will break the oil blockade. We will force the Ukrainians to resume oil supplies by force. Without any conditions and to open the pipeline in the near future," Orbán stated on March 5.
Telex emphasizes that the date is significant because at that time the public knew nothing about the incident involving the seizure of the Oschadbank convoy.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, on May 6, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Hungary had returned Oschadbank’s funds and valuables, which had been seized by Hungarian special services in March of this year.
As a reminder, a week after the incident, the Hungarian side returned Oschadbank’s cash-in-transit vehicles.
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