Further documents linked to Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs have emerged, shedding light on the relationship between Áron Orbán, the brother of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and former Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó. One email from 2023 shows Áron Orbán offering to cooperate with Szijjártó and recommending his newly appointed chief adviser. Two other documents reveal an earlier request for a personal meeting and a visit to the ministry in 2016.
György Velkey, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published the documents on Facebook. He said he and his colleagues began searching the ministry’s records for material related to Áron Orbán after the former prime minister’s brother was detained on suspicion of human smuggling. They found several emails of interest and decided to make three of them public.
Áron Orbán recommended his chief adviser to Szijjártó
One of the documents is an email sent in September 2023, in which Áron Orbán directly offered cooperation to Péter Szijjártó, who was foreign minister at the time. Introducing himself as a chief executive, Orbán also presented a newly appointed chief adviser to the minister.
Velkey obscured the adviser’s name, citing personal rights, although he suggested in his post that it would not be difficult to work out who the person was.
In the email, Áron Orbán said the adviser had been appointed because of his achievements in education, training, IT, centralisation and consolidation projects. He asked Szijjártó to place his trust in the adviser and contact him not only when planning and implementing projects but also when preparing decisions.
Orbán described the proposed cooperation as a strategic step that could help ensure the high-standard implementation of the objectives set. According to Velkey, Szijjártó forwarded the email to his immediate colleagues.
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Earlier request for a meeting with the ministry
Another email, dating from July 2023, shows Áron Orbán asking Eszter Gyarmati, then the ministry’s Administrative State Secretary, for a personal meeting. The proposed discussion concerned strategic cooperation in education, IT and security technology services.
Orbán’s chief adviser was also expected to attend. However, the published correspondence does not establish whether the meeting eventually took place.
The third document dates back further. It records that Szijjártó received Áron Orbán at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 27 May 2016. Tamás Menczer was also among the recipients of the related correspondence.
At the end of his Facebook post, Velkey hinted that more ministry documents concerning Áron Orbán could emerge. He concluded with the words “To be continued”, suggesting that further revelations may follow.
