Judit Varga, Hungary’s former justice minister, has used a parliamentary hearing on November 11 to renew detailed accusations against her ex-husband, Prime Minister Péter Magyar, alleging years of psychological abuse, humiliation, blackmail with a secretly recorded conversation and a staged suicide attempt.
“It is very important for people to understand what this man did to his own wife, because this is only the tip of the iceberg,” she said.
Varga appeared before the parliamentary committee, chaired by László Toroczkai of the right-wing Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) party, investigating alleged abuses in the judicial enforcement system linked to the earlier Schadl–Völner affair, a major scandal centred on alleged bribery and influence-peddling in the system of judicial enforcement officers overseen by her ministry and involving her then deputy, Pál Völner.
While rejecting any personal involvement in that case and demanding apologies from media that had linked her name to it, she devoted substantial time to her marriage and divorce from Magyar, who became Prime Minister on May 9 after his Tisza party won the April 12 election.
Toroczkai tried several times to interrupt her, though Varga argued the subject was part of the Schadl–Völner matter.
She stated that Magyar made a secret recording of a conversation with her in January 2023, later released publicly in March 2024, and used it to threaten and blackmail her for more than a year.
“At that time, I needed protection from Péter Magyar, because as soon as I announced the divorce, the real hell began,” she said.
Between January 2023 and March 2024, Varga said, Magyar continuously threatened her with the recording, warning that he would file a complaint, have her imprisoned and ruin her if she went ahead with the divorce, while at times telling her the recording did not exist.
She added that at the end of March 2023 he placed a printed complaint addressed to the Central Investigation Prosecutor’s Office in front of her.
Varga said her ex-husband had thereby put a price on the national interest.
In the 14 months between the making of the recording and its public release he had, she claimed, pocketed 4.4 million forints (€12,000) a month in state positions.
“If someone has decisive evidence, why wait that long and then why act as though it were an ‘atomic bomb’?” she asked.
She further accused him of humiliating and insulting her at home. She said he had mocked her because she never used her ministerial power for personal ends.
Magyar, she added, “loved to gossip” and called her an “idiotic houseplant” for not knowing what people in town were talking about.
In a video interview with the YouTube channel Patrióta recorded before the hearing, she urged Hungarians: “The first step is not being afraid of Péter Magyar,” and warned against letting “the hate emanating from [him] take the place of love”.
These claims build on allegations Varga first made publicly on March 26, 2024, the same day Magyar released the recording.
In Facebook posts and a lengthy interview with Frizbi TV, she described verbal and physical abuse during the marriage, including being locked in a room (freed by one of their sons), being pushed against a door while pregnant and Magyar walking around the house with a knife.
She specifically recounted an incident in February 2023 in which she said Magyar lay motionless on a bed beside a packet of Xanax from which multiple tablets appeared missing.
After she called an ambulance, he allegedly sat up, told her he had taken nothing and to cancel the call, then left in his pyjamas in the family car before the medics arrived.
Hungarian media later published what they described as the ambulance service report confirming a call for suspected poisoning at the couple’s address and that the patient had left before the crew arrived.
Magyar has consistently rejected the abuse allegations.
In 2024 he described them as slander and a character assassination orchestrated by the then government to distract from the recording, which featured Varga discussing possible interference in the Schadl–Völner case files by aides to Antal Rogán, then head of Viktor Orbán’s Cabinet Office.
Prosecutors closed the investigation into alleged file manipulation in June 2024, finding no one had tampered with the files. They said the recorded talk between Magyar and Varga was a private conversation in which she had shared gossip. Varga had told investigators that Magyar steered it.
A court rejected Magyar’s challenge to that decision in November 2024.
In response to the November 11 hearing, Magyar posted on Facebook that the statements were “personal and undignified”.
He wrote: “I am not angry. I am grateful for the past and for our three children. Now and in the future I will try to remember only the good things.”
He added that, at the couple’s request, a court had ruled there was no child-support obligation under their shared-custody arrangement, but that he nonetheless pays Varga 600,000 forints (€1,648) monthly.
He subsequently posted screenshots of transfers dated May 18 and June 25, 2026. Varga replied to the claim with the short comment “I don’t think so.”
An earlier police investigation into Varga’s 2024 abuse allegations was discontinued for lack of evidence.
🚨 BREAKING: Hungarian PM Péter Magyar’s ex-wife delivers a powerful message: “The first step is not being afraid of Péter Magyar!”
Judit Varga, Hungary’s former Minister of Justice under Viktor Orbán, broke her silence today ahead of her hearing before the parliamentary… pic.twitter.com/TLXc1Iu0Gr
— Balázs Orbán (@BalazsOrban_HU) November 11, 2026
