The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on Antal Rogan, one of the most influential people in Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz government and a minister in charge of his cabinet.
It is a rare move between the NATO allies and symbolizes the depth to which relations between the US and Hungary have sunk since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
“Antal Rogan is the primary architect, executor and beneficiary of this system of corruption,” said a statement issued by outgoing US Ambassador David Pressman.
Pressman leaves Budapest next week after two and a half years spent as an unusually active diplomat, traveling the country and often criticizing the Orbán government.
His departure comes days before Donald Trump's return to the White House, and the president-elect has a far more favorable opinion of Viktor Orbán than the Biden administration, seeing him as a close political ally.
“While Secretary Rogan's media megaphones will try to make this a story about partisan politics or an assault on sovereignty, today's decision is actually the opposite,” Pressman told reporters in Budapest on Tuesday.
“It is not the United States that threatens Hungary's sovereignty, but rather the kleptocratic ecosystem that Secretary Rogan helped build and direct, and from which he personally benefits.”
The ambassador's statement was immediately attacked by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó.
“This is the personal revenge of the ambassador who was sent to Hungary by the failed American administration, but left unsuccessfully and in disgrace,” Szijjártó wrote on Facebook.
“How good it is that in a few days the United States will be led by people who see our country as a friend, not an enemy.
The former US ambassador to Hungary, David Kornstein, also came to Rogan's defense: “The move by outgoing ambassador David Pressman exemplifies the hostile stance of the current US administration towards Hungary, right up to the last hour.”
The question for the incoming Trump presidency and his handpicked ambassador to Budapest, Matt Whittaker, is whether they will immediately lift the sanctions against Antal Rogan.
The answer is not as obvious as it seems.
Rogan also oversees local intelligence services and there are indications from several NATO countries that Hungary is no longer trusted with sensitive information because of the Orbán government's close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And for all the expressions of outrage at the decision to impose sanctions on Orbán's chief of staff, several senior figures in the Fidesz establishment have long been personally upset by the lifestyle of Rogan and others, the power he wields and his distance from conservative and Christian values that the party so loudly proclaims.