Hungary has closed the Oschadbank case after finding no crime connected to an $82 million shipment of cash and gold belonging to Ukraine’s state-owned savings bank, The Insider reported on 20 August 2026, citing the bank’s lawyer Lóránt Horváth.
Closing the money-laundering case removes the allegation used to justify seizing Oschadbank’s assets. A separate criminal investigation is examining the couriers’ detention, while Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s government has opened an internal review of the agencies involved. Together with the return of the assets, these steps reverse how this case was handled under former PM Viktor Orbán and may help improve relations with Ukraine.
Hungary’s National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV), the country’s tax and customs authority, traced the assets to a documented deal between Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International and Oschadbank. Raiffeisen provided records establishing the assets’ origin and Oschadbank’s payment, according to Horváth’s account of NAV’s decision.
Meanwhile, a separate investigation into the couriers’ alleged unlawful detention remains open. János Hajdu, the former head of Hungary’s Counter-Terrorism Center (TEK), is a suspect. TEK is the country’s armed counterterrorism police.
A leaked prosecution document named former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and three other former officials, including Hajdu, among those involved in deciding on the operation. Orbán has not been named as a suspect, Euronews reported on 30 June.
Orbán denies wrongdoing and says the raid was lawful.
How the Oschadbank case began
TEK stopped two armored cash-in-transit vans near Budapest on 5 March 2026. They carried $40 million, €35 million, and nine kilograms of gold from Vienna to Kyiv under a routine banking contract, Euromaidan Press reported. Officers detained the seven Oschadbank employees as witnesses, kept them handcuffed for 28 hours, and denied them lawyers and Ukrainian consular access, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said.
Hungary deported the couriers and imposed three-year Schengen bans, which barred them from most of Europe, although none had been charged with a crime. The orders and bans were later annulled.
Orbán’s government nevertheless portrayed the shipment as possible money laundering. Fidesz politicians also alleged, without evidence, that it was intended to finance Magyar’s then-opposition party, Tisza.
Hungary returned the vans, cash, and gold by 6 May. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the handover a break with Orbán-era “lawlessness” and a sign that relations could advance through “mutual respect and healthy pragmatism,” Reuters reported.
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