{"id":133333,"date":"2026-03-06T18:02:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T18:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/hungary-to-expel-ukrainian-bank-workers-in-row-with-kyiv\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T18:02:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T18:02:45","slug":"hungary-to-expel-ukrainian-bank-workers-in-row-with-kyiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/hungary-to-expel-ukrainian-bank-workers-in-row-with-kyiv\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungary to expel Ukrainian bank workers in row with Kyiv"},"content":{"rendered":"

BUDAPEST, Mar 6 \u2013 Hungary says it is expelling seven Ukrainian bank workers arrested on Thursday while transporting $80m (\u00a360m) worth of cash and 9kg of gold in cash-transport vehicles to Ukraine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha accused Budapest of taking the group hostage and stealing money, Hungary\u2019s tax authority said they had been detained on suspicion of money laundering.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s state savings bank, Oschadbank, said they had been part of a regular transport between Austria and Ukraine and were \u201cunjustifiably detained\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hungary\u2019s tax authority said it was conducting criminal proceedings and added that the transport was being overseen by a former general of Ukraine\u2019s intelligence service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year alone, more than $900m, \u20ac420m and 146 kg of gold bars were transported through the territory of Hungary to Ukraine,\u201d the national tax and customs administration said in a statement on Friday.<\/p>\n

It is not yet clear what has happened to the enormous sums of cash and the gold seized on Thursday, but Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said \u201cthey\u2019ve stolen the money\u201d.<\/p>\n

Relations between Ukraine and Hungary have deteriorated during Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and have descended into a war of words over a halt to Russian oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The arrest of the bank workers comes deep in Hungary\u2019s election campaign, with Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n trailing in opinion polls with little more than a month before the vote.<\/p>\n

Hungarian reports described how black-clad officials from Hungary\u2019s TEK counter-terrorism centre raided the Ukrainian-registered vehicles on Thursday and then their convoy headed to Budapest.<\/p>\n

Sybiha accused Orb\u00e1n of dragging Ukraine into its \u201cdomestic politics and electoral campaign\u201d, adding that Kyiv would not tolerate \u201cthis state banditism\u201d.<\/p>\n

His opposite number in Budapest, Foreign Minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3, asked why such enormous sums were being moved in cash: \u201cIf this is truly a transaction between banks, why was it not carried out by transfer?\u201d<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n made no mention of the seven bank workers in his regular radio appearance on Friday, although he did say \u201ctransit shipments\u201d important to Ukraine would be halted until a row over Russian oil supplies was sorted out.<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n, seen as Russia\u2019s closest ally in the EU, has accused Ukraine of deliberately halting Russian oil through the pipeline.<\/p>\n

Kyiv says the pipeline was damaged in a Russian air strike in January, but Orban says satellite images indicate there is no reason why the pipeline should not be working and has threatened to \u201cforce the Ukrainians to restart deliveries\u201d.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUDAPEST, Mar 6 \u2013 Hungary says it is expelling seven Ukrainian bank workers arrested on Thursday while transporting $80m (\u00a360m) worth of cash and 9kg of gold in cash-transport vehicles to Ukraine. After Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha accused Budapest of taking the group hostage and stealing money, Hungary\u2019s tax authority said they had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}