BREAKING NEWS: US Dept of Treasury removes Hungarian Minister Rogán from sanctions list – UPDATED
The US Department of Treasury has removed Antal Rogán, the minister leading the cabinet office, from its sanctions list, “which shows that the winds have changed in Washington”, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, said on Tuesday.
The SDN List (Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List) is an official sanctions list maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under the US Treasury Department. It lists individuals, companies and entities that have been placed under financial and economic sanctions by the US government for various reasons.
Those on the list are prohibited from doing business in the United States. OFAC regularly updates the list in response to international sanctions and political situations. Minister Rogán was added to this list in early January, as we wrote here. Also we published a survey, about US sanctions against Minister Rogán: what do Hungarians think?
US removes Minister Rogán from sanctions list
The US Department of Treasury has removed Rogán from its sanctions list.
Szijjártó said that the previous administration led by Joe Biden had taken several measures against Hungary “out of pure spite, after its devastating defeat in the presidential election last November”.
“One of these measures was putting my colleague, Antal Rogán, on a sanctions list, clearly an act of political revenge by a frustrated ambassador leaving Hungary,” Szijjártó said, according to a ministry statement.
Minister Rogán has made history, as no minister from a country allied to the US has ever been on the sanctions list. As we wrote recently, the US report condemning Hungary for massive corruption remains in force: U.S. tariffs on Hungary cite corruption concerns, straining ties despite Orbán-Trump alliance
After this report, the White House refutes the Hungarian foreign minister’s claim: ‘We have nothing to add’
Today, we reported US Secretary Rubio’s called with Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjártó.
UPDATE: US ministry explained why they removed Rogán
Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson for the United States Department of State, said that keeping Mr Rogán on the sanctions list “no longer correlated with the foreign policy interests of the United States”. Antal Rogán told ATV that the Americans did not ask for anything in return.
Wow! I stand corrected. It is Open Season for our Politicians, as far as the Americans are concerned. Now they can slip over their IBANs and the counterparts understand what is expected of them…
Not entirely surprising – the Trump administration is on an interesting trajectory – https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristenkaufman/2025/03/03/trump-paused-the-foreign-corrupt-practices-act-what-does-it-mean-for-companies/
The statement by Marco Rubio does not state that Rogan is innocent of corruption charges but only that sanctioning Rogan is “inconsistent with US foreign policy interests”. The Trump Administration does not operate on any values based system. It is pure Machiavellianism but without much intelligence behind it unlike the Chinese for example.
Good catch @Larry. The carefully chosen wording speaks volumes:
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, spoke on Tuesday with his Hungarian counterpart, the foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, and informed him of the move, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
“The Secretary informed Foreign Minister Szijjarto of senior Hungarian official Antal Rogán’s removal from the US Department of the Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, noting that continued designation was inconsistent with US foreign policy interests,”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/15/hungary-sanctions-aide-viktor-orban