Just three Sundays from today, eight million Hungarians will decide whether to fire or re-hire prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement after 16 years in power.

If these MAGA darlings are driven from office, it will be in large part due to their increasingly flagrant corruption. Losing 15 points since 2012, Hungary’s slide in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is the steepest ever recorded for an EU member state.

High-profile cases involving Orbán’s father, brother-in-law, close childhood friend and former chief economic adviser have dominated independent media since the 2022 election. What’s worse: this has been fed by EU transfers. The Corruption Research Center Budapest (CRCB) calculates that the net value of contracts awarded (often without competition) to 13 Orbán cronies since 2010 exceeds €19 billion.

“The luxury lifestyle, it’s extreme,” says Dávid Jancsics, author of the 2024 book Sociology of Corruption: Patterns of Illegal Association in Hungary. “It’s not like they have a nice car. No, they have five Ferraris so it’s a different level ... The luxury lifestyle of the political elite is visible. What people see is Ferraris, Lamborghinis, properties in fancy locations ... Dubai, New York City ... When you are struggling with your bills, it’s especially annoying to see this extreme wealth”.

Dávid Jancsics is a professor at San Diego State University. Before leaving the band in 1999 to start his career in sociology, Jancsics played bass guitar with Budapest thrash/hardcore punk trio Leukémia. A reunion two years ago led to a new single in December 2025.

Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.

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