The United States has imposed sanctions on a close aide of Hungarian President Viktor Orbán

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 minister in charge of the cabinet.

It’s a rare move between the NATO allies and symbolizes the depths to which US-Hungarian relations have sunk since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

“Antal Rogan is the chief architect, executor and beneficiary of this system of corruption,” outgoing US Ambassador David Pressman said in a statement.

Pressman leaves Budapest next week after two-and-a-half years as an unusually active diplomat, traveling the country and frequently criticizing Orbán’s government.

His departure comes days before Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and the president-elect has a much more positive view of Viktor Orbán than the Biden administration, viewing him as a close political ally.

“While Secretary Rogan’s media megaphones will try to make this a story about partisan politics or an affront to 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 benefited.”

The ambassador’s statement was immediately attacked by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, Peter Sijarta.

“This is the personal revenge of the ambassador who was sent to Hungary by the failed US administration, but left unsuccessfully and in disgrace,” Szijárta wrote on Facebook.

“How good that in a few days the United States will be led by people who see our country as a friend, not an enemy.”

Former US Ambassador to Hungary David Kornstein also came to Rogan’s defense: “The move of the outgoing Ambassador David Pressman is an example of the hostile position of the current US administration towards Hungary until the last hour.”

The question for President-elect Trump and his handpicked ambassador to Budapest, Matt Whitaker, is whether they will immediately lift sanctions against Antal Rogan.

The answer is not as obvious as it may seem.

Rogan also oversees domestic intelligence services, and there are indications from a number of NATO countries that Hungary is no longer trusted with classified information because of the Orbán government’s close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And despite all the expressions of outrage over the decision to impose sanctions on Orbán’s cabinet chief, several senior figures in the Fidesz establishment have long been personally upset by Rogan’s and others’ lifestyles, the power he wields and his distance from conservative and Christian values ​​that the party so loudly proclaims.