Mihály Varga

Finance Minister Mihály Varga signed the February 2019 agreement establishing the Budapest headquarters of the Russian-led International Investment Bank (IIB) together with IIB president Nikolai Kosov, under which the bank was exempted from all taxes and public charges and from financial or regulatory oversight, and its staff and their families received diplomatic immunity and unrestricted entry rights. Opposition MP Zita Gurmai called the deal "Putin's Trojan horse," saying it offered "an unprecedented opportunity" for potentially risky individuals to enter EU territory without meaningful scrutiny. Direkt36's 2019 reporting noted that Varga represented Hungary at the highest level in the bank's leadership and traveled to Moscow in February 2019 to discuss Hungary joining another Russian-led financial institution. Separately, a January 2024 Átlátszó investigation found that Varga's family bought a Lake Balaton luxury property valued at HUF 169 million through a company (Gyenes Resort Kft.) created solely for that purpose: the company "had only one property and revenue equal to what the Varga family paid in rent," and after the family purchased the house in 2022 the company effectively stopped operating before entering voluntary winding-up (végelszámolás) at the end of 2023. Varga was thus simultaneously the signatory of a deal granting sweeping privileges to a Russian state bank, and the beneficiary of an opaque single-purpose corporate structure used to acquire a Lake Balaton luxury property.