SSP: Orban associate Balazs Hanko, whom Vucic decorated with the Order of the Serbian Flag, arrested in Hungary

Balazs Hanko, Hungary’s former minister of culture and innovation, has been arrested after the Hungarian parliament lifted his parliamentary immunity at the prosecution’s request, as Danas reports. According to Danas, the arrest of a close associate of Prime Minister Viktor Orban is shaking Hungary’s political elite on the eve of the 2026 parliamentary elections.

The Hungarian prosecution suspects Hanko of misusing entrusted funds, causing damage of around €47 million to the state budget through the National Cultural Fund (NKA), where the committee for priority cultural programmes distributed grants without real control of the applications. According to the Hungarian agency MTI, the money is suspected to have been used for the 2026 parliamentary election campaign and for personal needs.

Reminder: Hanko was decorated by Aleksandar Vucic with the Order of the Serbian Flag, first degree, in February this year, and Balint Pastor built a close political partnership with him, the statement by SSP councillor Robert Sebek in the Assembly of Vojvodina says.

Sebek demands that the Hungarian prosecution also investigate Hanko’s ‘innovative abilities’ outside Hungary and the flows of money toward domestic friends, and that Serbia’s future prosecution after the October elections support its Hungarian colleagues through international legal cooperation.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar called the arrest a turn toward equality before the law: ‘After decades of lies, millions of Hungarians experienced for the first time what regime change and equality before the law really mean.’