Part I — Situation overview

On Thursday, 17 September 2026, the Buda Central District Court ordered the pre-trial detention of the businessman Dániel Jellinek and of Norbert Szivek, former CEO of the Hungarian National Asset Management Company (MNV), for one month, until 17 October. The Central Chief Prosecutor’s Investigation Office (KNYF), the body of the prosecution service that handles high-priority corruption cases, is investigating them on suspicion of multiple counts of accepting bribes in an official capacity, and moved for the pre-trial detention of three suspects. For the third, unnamed suspect the court rejected the motion, and he was released; the regional court promised information on the details of that decision for Friday. The order on the two detentions is not final, the suspects and their defence counsel have appealed, and at second instance the Budapest-Capital Regional Court will decide. The same day the Budapest-Capital Regional Court set out the reasons in a press release: the risk of absconding and hiding, the risk of obstructing the taking of evidence, and in Dániel Jellinek’s case also the risk of reoffending. The defence asked for criminal supervision restricted to a property; the court found that the integrity of the evidence can at present be ensured only by pre-trial detention. Jellinek’s group of companies called the coercive measure disproportionate.

MIAK already published an analysis of the case on 16 September, at that point after the suspects were taken into custody, focusing on the publicity of procurement data and on the asset manager’s valuation methodology. Since then two new facts have emerged. One is that a court has now decided on the restriction of personal liberty, and rejected one of the three motions. The other is that on Thursday evening, in an interview with ATV, Prime Minister Péter Magyar mentioned the name of Miklós Seszták, who was Minister of National Development between 2014 and 2018 and is today a KDNP Member of Parliament. According to the report by 444.hu, the Prime Minister said he considers it suspicious that the investigation is being conducted by the KNYF, because this is the case when a person with parliamentary immunity is in view. According to publicly known information, Miklós Seszták is not a suspect in the case. In addition, in a separate procedure the National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) is examining the procurements of the Volán companies between 2015 and 2018 on suspicion of breach of trust and money laundering, with eight suspects.

MIAK’s reading: Thursday’s decision is a sign that the rule-of-law guarantees are working, because the court did not mechanically approve the prosecution’s motions, but weighed each suspect separately, and gave public reasons for its decision. This practice today depends on the court’s goodwill, not on a rule. On the side of the executive the situation is the reverse: the Prime Minister did not comment on the detentions, but he linked the name of a politician who is not a suspect to the case through an inference about competence. Moreover, Section 30 of the Act on Criminal Procedure (in its text as promulgated) assigns the acceptance of bribes in an official capacity to exclusive prosecutorial investigation by itself, on the basis of the type of offence, which means that it does not follow from the KNYF’s handling of the case that a person with parliamentary immunity is involved. The credibility of accountability depends at the same time on the quality of the judicial decision and on the discipline of political statements.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three sources help interpret Thursday’s events. Joseph Raz (Israeli–British legal philosopher, Oxford professor) breaks the rule of law down in his volume The Authority of Law (1979) into measurable formal principles; two of these belong directly here. According to one, the purpose of the rules on judicial independence is that the judge decides free from all external pressure; according to the other, not only the court but also the discretion of investigating and prosecuting bodies can hollow out the law. Article 5(3) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR, the Council of Europe’s human rights convention of 1950, compliance with which is monitored by the European Court of Human Rights, the ECtHR, in Strasbourg) requires that pre-trial detention be decided by a judge, and Article 6(2) lays down the presumption of innocence. Daniel Kahneman (Israeli–American psychologist, awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002) describes in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) how fast, intuitive thinking builds a coherent story even from the little information available, and does not take into account what is missing. That is why a mention of a name by the government sticks even when no procedural fact supports it. The detailed treatment of the literature — by author, with quotations — is in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. The first makes Thursday’s good practice mandatory, the second makes it measurable whether judicial control is real, and the third lays down a written rule on the side of the executive.

3.1 A mandatory public summary of the reasons for decisions on coercive measures in high-profile cases (regulation by 31 March 2027)

The Act on Criminal Procedure already allows the court to inform the public, but it does not prescribe when and with what content. MIAK proposes that the President of the National Office for the Judiciary (OBH), the head of the central administration of the courts, lay down the following in a uniform regulation. In cases of prominent public interest, the court should publish a public summary of the reasons for the investigating judge’s — the judge deciding on coercive measures before indictment — decision on pre-trial detention on the working day following the decision. The summary should state which statutory ground for pre-trial detention (absconding, endangering the taking of evidence, reoffending) the court established, why it did not consider a less restrictive measure (criminal supervision, bail) sufficient, and when the next review is due. The key element of the rule is symmetry: a rejected motion must be reported in the same detail and within the same deadline as an order, since judicial control is visible precisely in the rejection. The summary does not disclose the content of the evidence, only the legal reasons. The proposal does not affect judicial independence, because it regulates the communication of a decision already taken, not its content. This extends the I1 court transparency programme point to the investigation stage. According to Raz’s principle (see 6.4.1), a public and fair procedure is a condition of the correct application of the law, not an after-the-fact courtesy.

3.2 An annual statement of coercive measures, broken down by court (first publication by 30 June 2027)

It does not follow from a single rejected motion that judicial control is strong at the level of the system. MIAK therefore proposes that the OBH publish annually, by court: how many motions for pre-trial detention were received, how many of these were ordered, how many were rejected, and in how many cases the court ordered a less restrictive measure than the one moved for; the average duration of pre-trial detention; and how many of the cases of detained persons later ended in acquittal or in the termination of proceedings. The prosecution side’s data — the number of motions submitted and withdrawn — should be included in the Prosecutor General’s annual report to the National Assembly. The two data series together show whether the investigating judge is a real filter, or whether near-total acceptance of motions is typical. This is the court counterpart of the investigative statistics MIAK proposed in its analysis of 20 August 2026: there it was about the opening and termination of investigations, here it is about the deprivation of personal liberty. The data could appear on the court data platform of I1 and in the institutional health report of A6. According to the benchmark of Article 5 of the ECHR (see 6.4.2), pre-trial detention is an exception that must be justified individually in every case. Whether this is so in practice can only be established from a time series.

3.3 A Government rule on statements about pending criminal cases (adoption within 60 days)

MIAK proposes that the Government lay down, in its rules of procedure or in a separate government resolution, four rules that apply equally to the Prime Minister, the ministers and the government spokespersons. First: no member of the government may call a suspect or defendant guilty, or characterise the evidence. Second: no member of the government may link the name of a person who is not a suspect to a pending criminal case in a way that suggests suspicion; if the political responsibility of a former minister is the question, it must be formulated in the language of political responsibility, separately from the proceedings. Third: a member of the government should announce a procedural fact (being brought in, being named a suspect, pre-trial detention) only after a statement by the investigating authority, the prosecution service or the court, and with reference to it. Fourth: no member of the government should publicly draw inferences about competence as to whom the investigation may be directed at. The rule does not restrict political debate, but separates it from the proceedings. Under the Act on Criminal Procedure, the public is informed by the investigating authority, the prosecution service and the court; the government has no role in this circle. According to Kahneman’s observation (see 6.4.3), a name uttered by an official leaves a lasting impression even if nothing later supports it, which is why the rule must be laid down in advance, not corrected afterwards.

The three proposals are bound together by a single principle: accountability is credible not because it is fast or spectacular, but because each of its actors stays within their own competence. The judge weighs the case in public, the investigating authority and the prosecution service announce the procedural facts, and the government speaks about political responsibility, not criminal responsibility.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Justice The public summary of reasons and the annual statement make the investigating judge’s decision verifiable; boilerplate reasoning becomes visible The summary itself may become boilerplate; fearing public criticism, judges may decide more cautiously in the direction of ordering or rejecting
Effectiveness of investigations Knowing the legal reasons reduces speculation and the demand for leaks If the summary discloses factual details beyond the legal reasons, suspects and witnesses may infer the direction of the investigation
Executive A written rule on statements reduces the risk that the fairness of later proceedings becomes contestable because of a government statement Compliance with the rule is hard to enforce; if it remains only a recommendation, political competition may override it
Publicity and personality rights Persons who are not suspects receive protection against government mentions of their names that suggest suspicion Too broad a rule could also silence legitimate debate on the political responsibility of former members of the government

The main question to weigh lies between publicity and the interests of the investigation. MIAK’s solution is that the summary contain only the legal reasons — which statutory ground the court established, and why the less restrictive measure is not enough — and not the evidence. Thursday’s press release was exactly like that: it revealed no investigative detail, yet it made the decision understandable. The second risk is the boundary of the rule on statements. Political responsibility (who directed the ministry, who supervised the asset manager) is a legitimate public question, and the rule cannot prohibit debate about it. The dividing line is the suggestion of criminal suspicion: saying that “X was the responsible minister in this period” is a political statement, whereas saying that “it follows from the identity of the investigating body that a person with parliamentary immunity is involved” is already a procedural inference. The proposal becomes risky if the government applied the rule not to itself but only to the opposition; that is why it must be included in the Government’s own rules of procedure, and any breaches of it must be publicly accounted for every year.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (suggested KPIs)

MIAK proposes four performance indicators (KPIs, in English: Key Performance Indicator) from which it will be visible in 6, 12 and 24 months whether the proposals have been implemented:

  • Publication rate of summaries of reasons: the suggested target is that from the second half of 2027 a public summary appear on the working day following the decision for 100 per cent of pre-trial detention decisions taken in high-profile cases — for orders and rejections alike.
  • Appearance and content of the annual statement of coercive measures: it is worth following whether the first statement appears by 30 June 2027, and whether it contains, by court, the proportion of motions ordered, rejected and replaced by a less restrictive measure.
  • Adoption of and compliance with the rule on statements: the suggested target is that the Government adopt the rule within 60 days, and report publicly every year on how many times a member of the government had to correct a statement.
  • Procedural milestones of the Volánbusz case: it is worth following the second-instance decision on the detentions, whether the pre-trial detention is extended or replaced with a less restrictive measure before 17 October, and whether, in the NNI proceedings, the analysis of the unit prices and market comparison of the 2015–2018 bus procurements becomes public after indictment.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request is twofold. It asks the courts and the OBH to make Thursday’s practice — a decision reasoned separately for each suspect and communicated publicly, including the rejected motion — not an exception but the rule, and to make it measurable through an annual statement whether the investigating judge is a real filter. It asks the Government to commit in a written rule that in a pending case it will not call a suspect guilty, will not cast suspicion on a person who is not a suspect, and will announce procedural facts only after the authorities have announced them. Under Article XXVIII(2) of the Fundamental Law, no one shall be considered guilty until their criminal liability has been established by a final decision of a court — this benchmark applies to the government too.

Two MIAK foundational values are at stake. Transparency, because judicial control strengthens trust only if it is visible: a publicly reasoned rejection says more about how the rule of law works than any political statement. Accountability, because accountability stands or falls on the separation of powers: if the head of the executive names suspects or persons who might be suspected, part of the public will see the later judgment — whatever it is — as a political decision, and accountability itself thereby loses credibility.

Part VI — Reasoning and further sources

6.1 Press framing by spectrum

In the left-liberal band the emphasis was on the judicial reasoning. Both Telex and 444.hu put the strongest sentence of the Budapest-Capital Regional Court’s press release in their headlines — that the suspects have every financial means to evade the proceedings. 444.hu also highlighted the financial background, with Forbes’s estimate, and the network of business relationships, while Telex published the group of companies’ reaction in a separate article and, in the background, linked Norbert Szivek’s leadership of MNV to the ministerial period of the time. 444.hu covered the mention of Miklós Seszták in a separate article, emphasising in the headline that the Prime Minister “started bringing up” the former minister. The article also recorded that the Prime Minister did not comment on the detentions. HVG and Népszava made the release of the third suspect the subject of their headlines, essentially following the news agency text.

In the general-interest band 24.hu published the most detailed legal summary: the judicial examination of the reasonable suspicion, the defence’s motion for criminal supervision, and the fact that the regional court will decide on the appeal on the basis of the case files. In its article on the third suspect, the same outlet wrote that the investigation “could even reach a former minister”, which frames as news an assumption going beyond the circle of suspects. Index, relying on HVG and the regional court’s press release, quoted the judicial reasoning, while ATV put the emphasis on separating the two parallel proceedings, with a clarifying statement from the KNYF spokesperson.

In the economic band Portfolio, citing 24.hu’s information, presented the news as a “turn”, and reconstructed in detail the exact period of the MNV leadership and the assumed route of the money flows — this time already using the word “pre-trial detention” precisely, for the judicial decision. In the conservative band Magyar Nemzet reported in a factual news item that the court had detained “one of Hungary’s richest people”, and consistently attributed the suspicion to the prosecution service. Common to all the articles processed by MIAK is that none of the outlets dealt analytically with the significance of the judicial rejection — the fact that the court did not accept one of the three motions — and no one raised the procedural-law problem of the Prime Minister’s mention of a name.

6.2 Facts and data

Datum Value Source
Court deciding on pre-trial detention Buda Central District Court Press release of the Budapest-Capital Regional Court, 17 September 2026 (Telex, 24.hu)
Duration of pre-trial detention one month, until 17 October 2026 Press release of the Budapest-Capital Regional Court, 17 September 2026
Motions for pre-trial detention / orders / rejections 3 motions, 2 orders, 1 rejection KNYF and Budapest-Capital Regional Court, 17 September 2026 (24.hu, HVG, Népszava)
Number of suspects in the KNYF proceedings 5 KNYF information, 17 September 2026 (24.hu, Népszava)
Grounds for pre-trial detention established absconding, hiding, obstructing the taking of evidence; in Dániel Jellinek’s case also the risk of reoffending Press release of the Budapest-Capital Regional Court, 17 September 2026
Less restrictive measure requested by the defence criminal supervision restricted to a property 24.hu, 18 September 2026; Index, 18 September 2026
Penalty range for the offences attributed to the suspects 5–15 years’ imprisonment (under the rules on cumulative offences, according to the prosecution service) 24.hu, 18 September 2026
Status of the order not final; because of the appeal, the Budapest-Capital Regional Court decides at second instance 24.hu, 444.hu, Index, 17–18 September 2026
Start of the KNYF’s own investigation 15 May 2026 KNYF press release (ATV, Népszava)
Suspects in the NNI proceedings 8 former executives NNI, 10 September 2026 (Telex, 444.hu)
Bus procurement examined in the NNI proceedings more than 600 (608 according to ATV) used buses, 2015–2018 NNI (Telex, ATV, Portfolio)
Order of magnitude of the financial loss examined around HUF 10 billion NNI (Telex, 444.hu, 24.hu)
Hungary’s rule of law indicator +0.35 (2024) World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators

Two data points require a separate note. First: the regional court promised the reasons for the rejection concerning the third suspect for Friday, so the grounds for the rejection were not known at the time of writing this post. It is precisely this asymmetry — that the reasons for an order can become public immediately, and those for a rejection at the earliest a day later — that is the direct reason for proposal 3.1. Second: the Act on Criminal Procedure does not prescribe regular, court-by-court publication of the acceptance rate of motions for coercive measures. MIAK found no public time series from which the filtering role of Hungarian investigating-judge practice could be assessed; therefore the table in 6.2 contains no figure on this, and this gap is the reason for proposal 3.2.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Justice (programme points) — the publicity of the reasons for pre-trial detention decisions and the annual statement extend I1 (court transparency) to the pre-indictment stage; the rule on statements protects the judicial decision from external pressure, and is therefore also linked to the logic of I4 (protection of judicial independence);
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the statistics on coercive measures could find a place in the annual institutional health report of A6 (checks and balances); the credibility of A10 (independent anti-corruption investigation office) also depends on whether proceedings run separately from political communication;
  • Transport and infrastructure (background material) — the subject of the NNI proceedings is the 2015–2018 bus procurement of the Volán companies; the professional background of the vehicle fleet procurement appears in the assessment of the Volán integration;
  • Economy (programme points) — G6 (programme against rent-seeking and regulatory capture) describes the risk in the relationship between the state asset manager and private investors that the present proceedings are examining.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law

Raz regards the rule of law not as a moral ideal but as a formal virtue of the legal system, and breaks it down into eight concrete principles. The justification of the principle on judicial independence is concise:

“The rules concerning the independence of the judiciary — the method of appointing judges, their security of tenure, the way of fixing their salaries, and other conditions of service — are designed to guarantee that they will be free from extraneous pressures and independent of all authority save that of the law.”

The next principle names an open and fair hearing and the absence of bias as conditions of the correct application of the law. The eighth principle states that not only the court but also the discretion of the police and the prosecuting authorities can hollow out the law. In the Volánbusz case these three principles together provide the benchmark. The investigating judge’s public decision, reasoned separately for each suspect, is the practical realisation of the second principle. The public inference by the head of the executive about the direction of the investigation, on the other hand, is precisely the external pressure from which, according to Raz, the application of the law must be protected — even if the speaker’s intention is to support accountability. Proposals 3.1 and 3.3 are two sides of this same principle.

📖 Source: Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law — Essays on Law and Morality

6.4.2 The European Convention on Human Rights

Two provisions of the ECHR provide the international benchmark for Thursday’s decision. Under Article 5(3), a person who has been detained must be brought promptly before a judge, and is entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial; release may be conditioned by guarantees. Article 6(2) reads:

“Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.”

The case law of the ECtHR has drawn two conclusions from this that are essential for the Hungarian case. One is that the continuation of pre-trial detention must in every case be supported by individual, concrete reasons; boilerplate reasoning in itself violates Article 5 — the Strasbourg court has found a violation of Article 5(3) against Hungary in several cases too. The other is that the presumption of innocence can be violated not only by the judge but by any public authority actor who, in a statement, treats the suspect as guilty. Thursday’s order visibly met the first benchmark: the court weighed each suspect separately, rejected one motion, and expressly addressed the possibility of a less restrictive measure. The second benchmark applies to the executive, and proposal 3.3 turns it into a written rule.

📖 Source: European Convention on Human Rights (Rome, 1950), Articles 5 and 6

6.4.3 Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow

One of the central concepts of Kahneman’s book is the rule “what you see is all there is”: intuitive thinking builds a coherent story from the information available, and is insensitive to how little information, and of what quality, the story is built on. According to the author, the consequence of this is overconfidence:

“The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little.”

In a pending criminal case this mechanism means that an official mention of a name made before a large audience — “the procurements fell in the period when he was minister”, “it follows from the identity of the investigating body that a person with immunity is involved” — assembles itself into a finished story in the listener’s mind, even if the most important element of the story, the procedural fact, is missing. A later correction or the absence of proceedings rarely overrides this impression. That is why an after-the-fact clarification is not enough: the rule on statements (see 3.3) must designate in advance what the government may say about a pending case.

📖 Source: Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Hungarian edition: Gyors és lassú gondolkodás)

6.5 International comparison

The European Union’s Directive 2016/343 on the presumption of innocence expressly requires member states to ensure that, for as long as the guilt of a suspect or accused person has not been proved according to law, public statements made by public authorities do not refer to that person as guilty. The directive thus protects suspects; it does not address the naming of persons who are not suspects, so the second element of proposal 3.3 goes further than it. One of the ECtHR’s landmark cases, Allenet de Ribemont v. France (1995), held precisely that a statement made at a press conference by the Minister of the Interior and senior police officers, presenting a person as guilty, violates the presumption of innocence even before indictment. In the United Kingdom the court is obliged under the Bail Act 1976 to give and record reasons for refusing bail, and communications that endanger the fair trial of pending cases are restricted by the Contempt of Court Act 1981, which also applies to politicians. These examples point in one direction: the reasoning of a decision on coercive measures is a duty towards the public as well, and the executive speaks about pending cases within written limits.

Justice

  • I1 — Court transparency
  • I4 — Protection of judicial independence

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A10 — Independent Anti-Corruption Investigation Office

Economy

  • G6 — Programme against rent-seeking and regulatory capture

Proposed new programme point: The executive’s rule on statements about pending criminal cases — for the Justice area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 18 September 2026 — topic 1):

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law — Essays on Law and Morality
  • 📖 European Convention on Human Rights (Rome, 1950)
  • 📖 Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Hungarian edition: Gyors és lassú gondolkodás)

Sources of law:

  • Fundamental Law of Hungary, Article XXVIII(2)
  • Act XC of 2017 on Criminal Procedure — the provisions on exclusive prosecutorial investigation, on informing the public, and on the conditions of coercive measures affecting personal liberty

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I1, I4)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A6, A10)
  • MIAK policy area: Economy (programme points; programme point ID: G6)
  • MIAK policy area: Transport and infrastructure (background material)
  • MIAK press monitor, 18 September 2026 — topic 1, score: 92/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • Directive (EU) 2016/343 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the strengthening of certain aspects of the presumption of innocence
  • European Court of Human Rights — Allenet de Ribemont v. France (1995)
  • World Bank — Worldwide Governance Indicators, rule of law indicator
  • Press releases of the Budapest-Capital Regional Court

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