Conflict with Kiev/ Hungary will expel Ukrainian bank employees

2026-03-06 16:54:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Hungary says it is deporting seven Ukrainian bank employees arrested Thursday while transporting $80 million in cash and 9kg of gold in vehicles destined for Ukraine. After Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha accused Budapest of holding the group hostage and stealing the money, Hungary's tax authority said they were detained on suspicion of money laundering.

Ukraine’s state savings bank, Oschadbank, said they had been part of a regular transport between Austria and Ukraine and had been “unjustly detained.” Hungary’s tax authority said it was conducting criminal proceedings and added that the transport was being supervised by a former general of Ukraine’s intelligence service.

"This year alone, more than $900 million, 420 million euros and 146 kg of gold bars were transported through the territory of Hungary to Ukraine," the national tax and customs administration said in a statement on Friday.

It is still not clear what happened to the large sums of cash and gold seized on Thursday, but Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said they stole the money.

Relations between Ukraine and Hungary have deteriorated over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and have degenerated into a war of words over the disruption of Russian oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline to Ukraine. The arrest of the bank employees comes at the height of Hungary’s election campaign, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán trailing in opinion polls, just over a month before the vote. Hungarian reports describe how black-clad officers from Hungary’s TEK counterterrorism center raided vehicles with Ukrainian registrations on Thursday and then drove their convoy to Budapest.

Sybiha accused Orbán of dragging Ukraine into "domestic politics and election campaigning," adding that Kiev would not tolerate "this state banditry."

His counterpart in Budapest, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, asked why such large sums were being transferred in cash: “If this is really a transaction between banks, why wasn’t it done by wire transfer?”

Orbán did not mention the seven bank employees in his regular radio appearance on Friday, although he said that crucial transit shipments to Ukraine would be halted until a dispute over Russian oil supplies was resolved.

Orbán, seen as Russia's closest ally in the EU, has accused Ukraine of deliberately stopping Russian oil from flowing through the pipeline. Kiev says the pipeline was damaged in a Russian airstrike in January, but Orbán says satellite images show there is no reason why the pipeline should not be working and has threatened to "force the Ukrainians to resume supplies"./CNA, translated by BBC