This is how deputy PM Zsolt Semjén got involved in the scandal surrounding “Uncle Zsolti”

Online rumors about child sexual abuse against Viktor Orbán’s deputy Zsolt Semjén has been brought into the political mainstream by a heated exchange in the Hungarian parliament. The government is attempting to reframe the events as a foreign intelligence driven disinformation scandal, implicating a journalist with alleged MI6 connections as the originator of the allegations. However, these rumors have been a part of the Hungarian online folklore for years.

On September 22, a heated exchange took place in the Hungarian parliament involving Zsolt Semjén, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s deputy, and two opposition MPs. The latter compiled a list of scandals from recent years, involving the sexual misconduct of church and child protection institutional leaders with strong government ties – most notably, Péter Pál Juhász, former head of the children’s correctional institute of Szőlő Street, Budapest, who was arrested earlier this year on child labor and prostitution charges. After one of the MPs, Gergely Arató heavily implied that Zsolt Semjén was involved in some form of child exploitation, Semjén asked for the floor and vehemently denied any guilt.

Of course, in politics, such denial only strengthens suspicion regardless of one’s guilt or innocence – two days later, Semjén is at the center of a swirl of accusations and rumors. A video of the exchange can be seen here:

Sex abuse? No, spying

Since the exchange, the Orbán government had to resort to crisis communication. Their main strategy has been to reframe the accusations against Semjén as a foreign intelligence operation, claiming that the “real scandal” is a foreign intelligence-driven disinformation operation.

To that end, pro-government sources – including the Ministry of Justice, which hastily published a 3-page report on the case – targeted Csaba Káncz, a journalist who regularly publishes largely unsourced geopolitical speculations on Facebook. This was based on the fact that on September 13, Káncz posted allegations against Semjén as well as another top government official, Antal Rogán.

Since in the past, Káncz reportedly worked for a company with ties to the British MI6, pro-government media started painting him as the “central figure of the Szőlő Street spying scandal”, and claiming that the accusations against government politicians started with him.

However, Áltátszó’s investigation reveals that the rumors against Semjén (and to a lesser extent Rogán) have been disseminated online for years, and were brought up by social media users repeatedly following child exploitation scandals, such as the Szőlő Street criminal case or the previous presidential pardon scandal the lead to the fall of then-president Katalin Novák.

So far, these urban legends failed to break into mainstream politics, but they were brought into national attention due the exchange in the parliament, and are fueled by the abysmal state of Hungary’s child protection infrastructure, the insufficient justice against well-connected exploiters, and the well-known problem of sexual misconduct within the Catholic Church.

Szőlő Street and “Uncle Zsolti”

The ongoing scandal goes back to the arrest of Péter Pál Juhász, former head of the Szőlő Street Budapest Juvenile Correctional Institute in May 2025. Juhász was arrested on human trafficking, forced labor, and other charges. Allegedly, he and his partner exploited the institute’s inhabitants as sex workers under the guise of employment.

Before his arrest, Juhász was a well-respected public figure who presented the image of a Christian-Conservative man – he even passed the private life background check instituted in 2024 for all child protection officials. He was regularly interviewed in national media, and appeared besides government politicians. For example, Juhász received the Dunakeszi Public Safety Award, which was led by Fidesz at the time, and photos emerged of him with Deputy State Secretary Péter Csizi, Fidesz Member of Parliament Péter Cseresnyés from Zala County, and Fidesz Mayor László Balogh from Nagykanizsa.

Later, 444 wrote that Péter Pál Juhász had previously run companies together with high-ranking figures close to the government, one of his business partners, for example, becoming a member of the board of trustees of a foundation funded by public money.

The Szőlő Street case was brought back into public attention on September 8, when the former head of the Budapest Regional Child Protection Service (Budapest TEGYESZ), Gábor Kuslits was interviewed by Válasz Online. In the Interview, Kuslits cited alleged rumors spreading among child protection officials,

claiming that two high-level politicians were shielding Juhász from justice, since Juhász trafficked boys to one, and girls to another.

Kuslits was subsequently reported for defamation and failure to report by the national child protection agency SZGYF. He has also been confirmed as a witness at the Szőlő Street case.

Notably, Kuslits did not name any names. However, following the interview, many social media users began “identifying” the two politicians involved in trafficking as Zsolt Semjén and Antal Rogán.

We looked at postings on Facebook from the 8^th to 10^th of September, and found several such comments accusing the two politicians of involvement in the trafficking. Since Csaba Káncz first posted on this topic on the 13^th of September,

it is clear that the accusation did not originate with him, and that he merely repeated pre-existing rumors.

The direct preceding event of the scandal in the parliament is likely a podcast by former politician Péter Juhász (no relations to Péter Pál Juhász), who on September 19 interview an unidentified man who claimed to have information on child molestation that allegedly took place in another child protection facility, an unnamed children’s home near Ózd, North-East Hungary.

The man claimed that child victims identified their abuser, referred to him as “Uncle Zsolti” on TV, and hinted at the alleged abuser being the deputy-PM.

Notably, this allegation was made by an unknown person citing no evidence or any authenticating detail. It also did not claim abuse in the Szőlő Street facility, but a different, unknown home. Regardless, the opposition MP Gergely Arató likely heard this podcast, as he called upon Semjén to tell “who is Uncle Zsolti”.

Where the original accusation came from

Looking even further back online, allegations of sexual misconduct against Zsolt Semjén

started in 2023 after a leaked document from the Schadl-Völner criminal case was posted online.

The case was about bribery and corruption involving the head of the Hungarian Bailiffs’ Chamber, and former justice state secretary Pál Völner, as well as a career criminal Róbert R. A subplot of this story was that Róbert R. allegedly attempted to collect compromising material on government officials, presumably to shield their operation.

Scans of Róbert R.’s notes on this blackmailing scheme were posted online by opposition MP Ákos Hadházy. One of these notes was about Semjén, but it was redacted since, according to Hadházy, it contained “a serious, unprovable allegation”. However, an unredacted version appeared likely by mistake in a video posted by Hadházy, and it shows that Róbert R. wrote the following about Semjén: “several videos of oral sex in a hunting lodge with gypsy boys.”

The redacted and unredacted version of the document posted by Ákos Hadházy

Hadházy later said that the document merely suggests that R. thought that there could be compromising recordings of sexual nature (but not necessarily videos proving child sexual abuse) of Semjén made in the hunting lodge. However, there is no evidence that such recordings were in R’s possession.

Even worse optics: the pardon scandal

The leaked note has already fueled rumors online in 2023, for example, it was reposted by a local chapter of the far-right Mi Hazánk party and by a user of Reddit’s Hungarian forum. However, it only generated serious attention online next year because of the Bicske child molestation and presidential pardon scandal.

While no direct connection between the two cases were revealed, online speculations quickly emerged connecting the two events. This was, for example, a core part of a YouTube video titled “What is behind the pardon case – Part 1 – Semjén’s hunting lodge”, which to date was watched by over half a million times. The video, published over a year before the allegations by Csaba Káncz, also connected the case with Antal Rogán.

Investigative reporting at the time, including that of Átlátszó, revealed that the perpetrators at Bicske had close relations to government figures. János Vásárhelyi, the head of the children’s home sentenced for child sexual abuse, has appeared in a campaign event with Viktor Orbán as early as 2002. He and Endre Kónya also organized children’s sporting events with the PM’s brother, Győző Orbán Jr., at Orbán’s sports club, NIKÉ SE.

As Átlátszó reported at the time, following the pardon scandal,

someone attempted to remove archive material about Vásárhelyi and Kónya from the internet.

Some of these could be retrieved from The Wayback Machine, including much of the content from the deleted gyermekotthonoksportja.hu (the url translates to “Children’s Homes’ sports”). The page featured among others, photos and reports of local and national politicians.

Semjén’s name came up while investigating the third perpetrator, Béla Kunstár. Kunstár was given an extremely lenient suspended prison sentence, despite the fact that he was indicted for the abuse of 4 minors.

Questions left unanswered

As we reported at the time, Béla Kunstár appeared alongside Zsolt Semjén in a 2013 article in Erdészeti Lapok (Forestry Journal): the Deputy Prime Minister inaugurated the World War II memorial of Vértesi Erdő Zrt. (also known as Vérteserdő Zrt.), which ended with a musical performance by Kunstár performed music.

Last summer, we also reported that shortly after the verdict was announced, Kunstár appeared at children’s camps funded by the Prime Minister’s Office in 2021 and 2022, and held music classes for children – which raises further suspicions of legal violations, as Kunstár has been permanently banned from working with children. The organizers first attempted to remove mentions of Kunstár from the document we have cited as proof, but later admitted that the sentenced Bicske employe was in the camp. They claimed that they had no knowledge of his criminal record.

Following the publication of our article, opposition politicians demanded the resignation of Gergely Gulyás, head of the Prime Minister’s Office. Gulyás and his colleagues replied that they had nothing to do with the camp’s funding, and said that the decision had been made by the State Secretariat for Church and Nationality Relations.

Although the aforementioned state secretariat operates within the Prime Minister’s Office, it is supervised not by Gulyás, but by Zsolt Semjén,

and its head is State Secretary Miklós Soltész.

The National German Cultural Association (ONKE), which organized the camp, is closely linked to the Association of German Local Governments in Northern Hungary (ÉNMÖSZ). ÉNMÖSZ is known by their annual Cultural Gala, which was previously held under the patronage of Zsolt Semjén.

Kunstár’s life after the criminal case raises further questions: In 2018, he posted a photo on his personal Facebook page posing with a Lamborghini worth HUF 100 million forints. According to our sources, normally, Kunstár could hardly have afforded the luxury car, however in 2017, the year the verdict was announced, he became an employee of a company called Profit Partner Cooperative, which shortly generated net sales of around HUF 100 million.

This was despite the fact that Profit Partner had very little visible activity, and that the company’s director was only 19 years old at the time of its founding. Information available on social media showed the young man as an acquaintance of Kunstár.

Kunstár has also been involved with several businesses tied to the governing Fidesz party: at one point, he ran a company owned by the Fidesz-led local government in Pátka, and another of his companies was later acquired by an associate of Lőrinc Mészáros.

A longstanding problem

Further fueling rumors against Semjén are the longstanding issues of sexual abuse within church with – Semjén is the head of the Christian Democratic People’s Party, the junior coalition partner of Fidesz, and is heavily involved with church affairs (especially the Catholic Church). Because of this he repeatedly advocated for church leaders who later got mired in sexual misconduct scandals.

In 2019, Semjén awarded Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Hungary, with the Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary. Hilarion, who was transferred to Hungary in 2022, was granted Hungarian citizenship in an expedited procedure and acquired a luxurious mansion in Vácduk, only to leave in disgrace in two years. As the Russian Novaya Gazeta reported at the time,

Hilarion’s assistant, 18-year-old George Suzuki, fled from Budapest to Japan to escape Metropolitan Hilarion, whom he accused of sexual harassment.

After the scandal, the Metropolitan was suspended from his position by the Russian Church.

András Pajor, a Catholic priest known for his public support of the governing parties, also received a state award from Zsolt Semjén. At the end of 2024, the church launched a child and youth protection against Pajor and suspended him from his parish. Válasz Online reached one of Pajor’s former altar boys who alleged that the priest had sexually abused him, along with other underage boys at the children’s camps he ran.

András Pajor with Zsolt Semjén after receiving the Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit “in recognition of his role in spreading Christian culture and educating young people.” Photo by Magyar Kurir

As we have reported, András Pajor regularly campaigned for Fidesz, for which the government rewarded him with the Hungarian Order of Merit. Pajor’s foundation, the Christian Cultural Academy Foundation, also received funding from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Urban Civil Society Fund (VCA).

In 2020, Hungarian news outlets

reported on the case against István Mészáros, a priest from Kalocsa, Southern Hungary, who was accused of sexual abuse by a young seminarian under his supervision.

István Mészáros was also working with children at a children’s home in Kalocsa at the time, and was chairman of the ethics committee of the Bács-Kiskun County branch of the National Hungarian Hunting Chamber.

This club cooperates with the National Hungarian Hunting Association led by Zsolt Semjén, to such an extent that Mészáros celebrated the joint “Hubertus Mass” and the swearing-in of new hunters. In September 2024, the trial began of Gábor Rónaszéki, a former Roman Catholic parish priest in Kiskunfélegyháza, who is accused of multiple counts of sexual abuse against boys under the age of 14 between 2019 and 2022. At the time, Rónaszéki was the vice-rector and prefect of the Budapest Central Seminary.

Based on reports from local residents, Válasz Online wrote that the two priests maintained a joint “relaxation farm” on the outskirts of Jánoshalma, which was visited by politicians including Zsolt Semjén, who previously held a seat in Kalocsa and then on the national list.

In all of these cases, Semjén denied knowledge of any sexual misconducts of the church leader he awarded, and said that he neither hunted with, nor visited the farm of the accused priests.