“Sorry, I’m a beginner” – said István Nagy, Minister of Agriculture, apologising for almost accidentally sitting on the accused’s bench on 25th of February, when he came to testify in the corruption case involving the Ministry of Agriculture at the Court of Székesfehérvár . The minister only appeared in court for the repeated summons, where he was questioned for hours by the judge, the prosecutor and the defence.

This comedy-style scene is just one of many interesting episodes that have taken place in the trial, which has been going on with little press interest in recent months. Although the criminal case is about the boring bureaucratic details of a seemingly boring ministry, and even the actors are easily confused because of their similar names (there are at least two “Nagy” surnames among them), in fact this trial provides a rare insight into the workings of the Hungarian government.

The essence of the case is that the prosecution accuses the former Deputy State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Dr. János Nagy, of having paid 2.2 billion forints to two law firms, which, according to the prosecution, did not do any substantial work. The money was transferred in 2019 from the account of the back office, which was about to be closed down.

János Nagy testified that the Minister himself gave the order to conclude the allegedly fictitious contracts. However, the minister has now claimed that he was unaware of the case at the time the contracts were signed. He testified that when he learned that an investigation was under way, he was “desperate” and was mainly concerned about his own involvement, for example whether he had signed something without his knowledge that could get him into trouble.

Besides the Minister’s testimony, there were other interesting developments in the trial:

At the trial in December of 2024 the names of companies with Fidesz ties also came up, which were not charged by the prosecution, but could also have benefited from the last billions of the National Cadastre Programme (NKP). According to a testimony, there were several Fidesz-linked companies contracted by the NKP immediately before the closure.

Among them there is a company owned by a former Fidesz MP, Imre Bodó, and another by a former well-known Fidesz politician, Attila Várhegyi. The evidence for these is a filing book in which contracts from the last few months were entered, according to the indictment, to make the false contracts appear legitimate.

Another curious aspect of the case is that, in addition to the two law firms implicated in the prosecution’s allegations, there is a third law firm that also received a valuable contract from the NKP before it was dissolved.

This contract was for 500 million forints and was given to the office of András Berényi, a lawyer who often appears in the media and who claims to be a Fidesz member. Berényi was not charged in the case. At the beginning of the case, however, he represented the main defendant, former Deputy State Secretary János Nagy, and appeared alongside other participants in the case.

The Minister takes the stage

“I have to be honest, I was excited and nervous about this story, about how much I was involved. Did I sign something that I didn’t see in all the papers?”

– said Agriculture Minister István Nagy in court when he was questioned as a witness in the case on 25 February.

He said he does not have the capacity to read and interpret every document that comes across his desk. “There are so many dossiers to sign every day… If you were to read through them all (…) to interpret the legal language in them, it would take weeks, not a day.” The minister added that he has a well-established solution to the situation, if he sees that a document has already been signed by several people, including his chief of staff, he can sign it.

“The colleagues are there and the organisational structure is set up so that I can sign in safety,” Nagy explained.

In this case, however, he most certainly did not sign anything, he told the court, because “they completely hid it from me and left me out of it”. Contracts of more than 10 million forints required special approval, but Nagy insisted in court that he did not see the multi-billion HUF contracts for lawyers in the case. After an internal investigation ruled out his own involvement, his then chief of staff also assured him that there was no case.

According to the Minister, the then chief of cabinet, Márton Nobilis, told him that by the time the court proceedings were completed, it would be clear to everyone that there could be no criminality in the case. Although the judge found the matter strange, Nagy insisted that he did not want to know any more about the case, which he claimed he still did not know the depth of.

If the chief of cabinet signs…

István Nagy’s words are in complete contradiction to what the prime accused in the case, former deputy state secretary János Nagy, testified at the trial. According to János Nagy’s earlier testimony in 2023, the lawyers’ contracts worth hundreds of millions of euros were essentially concluded by the NKP on the instructions of the minister. János Nagy has now testified that he was instructed by chief of staff, Márton Nobilis, on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture, as to which law firms to contract and how much to contract.

However, Istvan Nagy, although he indicated that he trusted the chief of cabinet, strongly denied this.

“I can’t say anything about that, because what is said in my name, without my authority, I have no (control over – the editor)” – he said.

The judge was also interested in the question, but the Minister of Agriculture gave an avoiding answer:

“Judge: So did Márton Nobilis, who was your chief of staff at the time, have the capacity and the authority to convey even untrue things to Dr. János Nagy, according to this?
István Nagy: I don’t know, I don’t assume that.”

The name of the minister’s then chief of staff, Márton Nobilis, was not the first to be mentioned at the hearing.

Nobilis has a special role in the case, as he is involved not only because of his former position, but also because of a family connection. Nobilis’s father, Kristóf Nobilis, is also a defendant in the case, accused of budget fraud on the basis of another set of facts and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. According to the indictment, the lawyers’ offices paid by the NKP transferred substantial sums of money to a Swiss bank account through a company in Budapest. According to the prosecution, the account was owned by a Panamanian offshore company linked to Kristóf Nobilis, who did not pay taxes on the money received. The elder Nobilis denied guilt, while his son had previously exercised his right to immunity on the grounds of family involvement and did not confess. In other words, it is not known what Márton Nobilis thinks about his role in the case, but he is not among the accused.

Direkt36 sent questions to both Márton Nobilis and Minister István Nagy at the Ministry of Agriculture. Neither of them responded to our request.

The filing book

The lawsuit also revealed details of how other people with government connections were getting their hands on money from the Ministry of Agriculture’s back office.

At a trial in December 2024, one of the defendants read out extracts from the so-called NKP filing book, which contained contracts concluded by the organisation.

One of the named companies is Bodó Ltd., owned by Imre Bodó, who was a Fidesz member of parliament between 2007 and 2014, and who also served as Fidesz mayor of the Tiszasziget settlement in Csongrád County for several years. Bodó’s main business at the time was gambling and betting, and he gave professional advice to the state agricultural company.

The testimony also refers to pm018 Ltd. as one of NKP’s contractual partners. This company is owned by the Várhegyi family, and its managing director is Attila Várhegyi, a former Fidesz member of parliament who was once Fidesz’s state secretary for culture and mayor of Szolnok.

The registry book also lists a family company, AGON Bt., founded in 1994, as a contractual partner of NKP. The founding owner of the company is the former director of the Operett Theatre, György Lőrinczy, who also held public office in the past. In 2017, Zoltán Balog, Minister of Human Resources, appointed Lőrinczy as vice-president of the National Cultural Fund for 4 years.

Direkt36 has sent questions to all three companies about the contract with the Ministry of Agriculture’s back office. Attila Várhegyi said that the NKP had contracted his company to provide communications consultancy services for the first half of 2019 for a net amount of HUF 9.6 million, and that his company had completed the task and received the amount. According to Várhegyi, NKP approached them, but he could not remember with whom exactly they had negotiated. The former Fidesz MP also said that, although he did not know anyone at the NKP, he had contacts in the ministry. He said that the minister and the deputy minister were among his contacts, and that the then chief of cabinet, Márton Nobilis, had previously been his employee.

György Lőrinczy told Direkt36 that his company has signed a 6-month contract with NKP for communications consultancy services for a monthly fee of HUF half million. According to Lőrinczy, he was approached for the job by minister István Nagy, which was a job that suited his profession, as he had previously worked in communications companies. He added that under the contract, he was actually working in the minister’s communications team, as well as doing protocol, marketing and event management for other ministry institutions. He said he had been told that to do this he had to sign a contract with the NKP, to which he nodded only if it was specifically included in his contract that he could work not only for the NKP but also directly for the Ministry of Agriculture, which runs it.

Imre Bodó did not respond to questions sent to him.

The third contract

Direkt36 has requested the contracts of the National Cadastre Programme Nkft. for the last months from the Ministry of Agriculture by means of a public interest information request. The data shows that, in addition to the two lawyer contracts detailed in the indictment, the NKP also concluded a third lawyer contract for a significant sum. This was the law firm of András Berényi, with whom a contract for HUF 500 million was signed.

András Berényi is a well-known lawyer who is a frequent media personality and who has previously worked as a lawyer for Péter Hajdú, a media owner, and Lajos Galambos, “Lajcsi Lagzi”, a popular musician. He has taught at the National University of Public Service and attended Donald Trump’s first presidential inauguration in the United States.

In an interview in 2019, he said of himself that he hates the term “celebrity lawyer” and “celebrating in the profession”, but clients love it. In the same interview, Berényi also said that he is a member of the governing party Fidesz and that his law firm is “outstanding both in terms of state and foreign partners”.

The contract between NKP and Berényi and Partners Law Office was concluded on 6 June 2019. Just in time, because NKP was dissolved less than a month later.

The prosecution did not prosecute this contract, and it is not clear from the indictment why.

This question was also raised by the main defendant in the case, former deputy state secretary János Nagy, who had earlier complained that this 500 million HUF contract was not subject to the same assessment as the other two contracts mentioned above.

“The investigating authority did not object to the Berényi contract and its execution, and then there could have been no objection to the other two, and the same is true, because the three contracts were concluded by the NKP at the same time, so it did not conclude only the two contracts at the same time”, said János Nagy in court during one of the 2023 hearings of the case.

Another curious aspect of the case is that János Nagy was previously defended by András Berényi, during the investigation of the case. Nagy later changed lawyers, as he said he thought Berényi should have been disqualified earlier because he represented several witnesses in the case, but as this did not happen, he intervened in the case himself. But more interesting is why he chose Berényi earlier. In one of his testimonies, Nagy claimed that it was not his idea to have Berényi as his defence lawyer.

“It’s rare that a person is in a situation where the military prosecutor shows up, handcuffs him. I got a name and a phone number before it happened to me, a few minutes before. In the shock that this caused me, I had no other option than this lawyer.”

– said Nagy, who did not say any more in his testimony. He said that he gave the authorization, but would not say who gave him the phone number.

Direkt36 has obtained several documents that show that the law firm Berényi and Partners had an even greater role in the criminal case. According to the documents we have obtained, András Berényi was not only János Nagy’s defence lawyer, he also gave legal representation to two witnesses in the case.

We also contacted the key actors in the case, such as András Berényi and János Nagy, but they did not respond to Direkt36’s request.