Anna Donáth, the former president of the left-wing Momentum party in Hungary, has been questioned as a suspect in a criminal investigation, according to a statement provided to the Hungarian state news agency MTI by the Prosecution Service of Hungary.
The investigation pertains to the alleged obstruction of another criminal investigation, one by the Criminal Directorate General of the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV). In February 2022, NAV agents were conducting a search of the premises of the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship, a religious organization run by a pastor named Gábor Iványi (a long-time critic of Viktor Orbán) for alleged accounting fraud. Donáth, an MEP enjoying political immunity at the time, showed up at the scene as a show of support for Iványi with supporters of her own and climbed into the sealed-off building through a window.
The alleged criminal conduct occurred when Donáth, with the other protesters, pushed Iványi against the NAV agents,
thus trying to break the line formed by said agents to prevent unauthorized access by the protesters.
Donáth is therefore accused of open defiance of lawful authority. The MEP had also been instructed to leave the premises prior, as only the suspect was allowed to be present for the search, but she ignored the lawful command.
Obstruction of justice cases are not uncommon in the world of politics (former US Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump have both been impeached for that alleged crime). However, what is unusual in this case is that it involved physical force by a national political figure.
Momentum failed to reach the five-per-cent threshold in the European Parliamentary elections earlier this year. As a result, Donáth resigned from her post as party president—and she also failed to win another term in the European Parliament, thus she lost her political immunity as well. This opened her up for a potential criminal prosecution for her 2022 conduct.
This is not the first time a prominent figure in Momentum has been incriminated in a case involving violence.
Former Momentum party president András Fekete-Győr was found guilty of assault on a public official in May 2023. The verdict was upheld on appeal in February 2024, and Fekete-Győr was given a one-year suspended prison sentence. At an anti-government protest in 2018 MP Fekete-Győr threw a smoke grenade at the police officers protecting the Parliament building, resulting in his criminal conviction. Despite having a criminal record he has refused to give up his seat in the National Assembly and is still representing Momentum in the legislature.
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