Bálint Ruff: The government had no other goal than to ensure that certain circles and interest groups grew ever richer

Bálint Ruff, who went from being a political analyst to a member of Péter Magyar’s government, gave his first interview since his appointment as minister. On the show hosted by Szabolcs Dull, the minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office, he said that very soon—“within days, I think”—there will be concrete details regarding the audits that his ministry has conducted or is still conducting.

“We’re going to file a series of criminal complaints—one, then another, and another, and yet another. Many of these investigations are much more complex and intricate, and we don’t want to report just one thing—that is, file a single complaint—but rather present, collectively, just how organized this operation was.”
Ruff, who said relatively early in the conversation: “When I first came to this position… I was shocked, and I’ve remained in shock ever since at what I’ve seen—what happened and what has been going on in this country,” divided the 16 years of the Orbán regime into two parts: the periods from 2010 to 2016 and from 2016 to 2026. He said that even during the first period, “the misappropriation of public funds” was evident in certain cases; as an example, he cited the case of the national bank foundations (the Hungarian National Bank originally established six Pallas Athéné foundations in 2014–15, which then merged at the end of the decade; and according to a report by the State Audit Office, hundreds of billions of forints in public funds were lost through the foundations and the network of companies they created).


Then, starting in 2016, according to Ruff, “essentially, the government had no other goal than to enrich other people. Every policy issue was pushed into the background (…) the ultimate goal was for people, interest groups, and certain circles to grow richer and richer.”

Let me give you a striking example. For instance, the Hungarian state has a strategic company—that is, one whose activities are important for the Hungarian economy, sovereignty, and national security. This company is operating perfectly well, but someone decides it should be sold. “What doesn’t happen in this case is that the company is put up for sale and the highest bidder buys it; it’s much more interesting than that: another agency of the Hungarian state—let’s say a bank—says, ‘I’ll lend the person who wants to buy this strategic company exactly the amount of money needed to cover the purchase price.’” In other words, the Hungarian state gives the Hungarian state’s money—a 100 percent loan, a bank guarantee—to a market player so that it can buy a strategic company from the Hungarian state. “And then the very next day, this company starts providing services back to the Hungarian state, which orders the very services that, until now, its own company had been providing,” Ruff explained the model.

When host Dull remarked that this reminded him of 4iG, the minister replied, “4iG did this in two strategic cases,” but he estimated there were about twenty such instances. As an example, he mentioned the highway concession, regarding which Dávid Vitézy had previously published shocking data showing that over the past four years, the state had paid out 1,024 billion forints to the private equity funds of Lőrinc Mészáros and László Szíjj.

Ruff also spoke about how, as a minister, he had already become familiar with the Orbán regime’s secret, so-called “3,000” government resolutions. “Without breaking any laws,” he said that 80 percent of them “are not related to defending the country or to what needs to be done in terms of national security, but rather to how various companies—well known to the press—can be placed in a position where the Hungarian government does not have to report on how much money it spends to enrich certain individuals.” When asked whether this information would be made public, he said that there is a process for declassifying documents, but in his opinion, 80 percent of what he has seen could be made public, because the Hungarian state has kept secret from us what it spends billions on.

“Several thousand billion forints,” he replied when asked about the approximate amount involved. “And so you know that this money ended up in private pockets?” Dull asked, to which he simply replied, “Yes.” Will there be consequences for this, perhaps even criminal ones? “I’m not the prosecution. I never will be, and neither will the ministry.”

But “will criminal charges be filed against Antal Rogán, János Lázár, and Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky?” the interviewer continued, to which Ruff replied: “Once the investigators finish their work, I’ll read their findings, and then I’ll take the necessary steps. It seems to me that, in all likelihood, the question of responsibility will arise for a great many people, at the very least.” Will there be charges against Viktor Orbán as well? “That’s not my business.”

The issue of Tamás Sulyok’s removal—and the one-sentence constitutional amendment solution—also came up in the conversation. “Péter Magyar really didn’t sell us a pig in a poke on this,” said Ruff, who noted that “based on the wisdom of the 141 members of the Tisza faction and the debates within the faction, this solution was ultimately accepted.”. As for the 12-year term limit for members of parliament, he said it was urgent to address this issue now because “we saw what happened to our predecessors, we saw the 70-30 split, we saw the entrenched structures, we saw how otherwise well-intentioned people can, due to the distorting effects of power, become what they do—how someone can go from being a simple, ordinary representative to a power-hungry minister.”

The minister also spoke about how there are “radical and even more radical” viewpoints within the parliamentary group: “These 141 people went through a two-year campaign in which they saw the worst aspects of the Orbán regime… what the Orbán regime’s media and propaganda did to them.” And in his view, they also saw how much people would like to live in a different country: “Of course, there are radicals and even more radical ones who would push ahead, saying, ‘Hey, here’s the mandate,” and this “let’s keep going further and further” sentiment may be reinforced by the fact that since April, Tisza has gained at least one million more supporters. “The question at this point is where the line is drawn, where it stops,” said Ruff, who believes this can be achieved by drafting the new constitution in a way that “every Hungarian person participates in it, and it is ultimately adopted by a referendum,” so that everyone can feel it is their own.