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Hungary seizes millions of euros in cash and gold from Ukrainian convoy

07 March 2026 05:10 (UTC +04:00)

An increasingly acrimonious spat between Hungary and Ukraine has escalated further, as Budapest impounded two Ukrainian armoured bank vehicles carrying millions of euros of hard cash as well as bars of gold, APA reports citing The Guardian.

Seven Ukrainian citizens accompanying the convoy were also arrested. Hungarian officials said the detained Ukrainians had intelligence links and suggested the money could be of dubious origin, while Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, accused Budapest of “taking hostages and stealing money”.

Sybiha also accused the pro-Russian Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, of cooking up the scandal for political gain, ahead of Hungarian elections next month.

Hungary’s national tax and customs administration said it had opened a money-laundering investigation over the shipment, which it said was made up of $40m and €35m in cash, as well as 9kg of gold. It said one of those arrested was “a former Ukrainian intelligence service general”.

Oschadbank, Ukraine’s state savings bank, said its staff were transporting cash and gold between between Austria and Ukraine in a “routine trip”, carried out by land because of restrictions on air travel in Ukraine.

But Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán, cast doubt on the shipment: “Armoured vehicles full of cash and gold moving across Hungary is not how legitimate financial transactions usually work,” he wrote on X. “The real question is simple: who stands behind this money and what is it meant to finance?”