Speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the 2025 Annual General Meeting of OTP Bank plc
25 April 2025, Budapest
25 April 2025, Budapest
The Turkic Council and the Hungarian-Uzbek Business Council have special significance in the unprecedented intensive economic cooperation between Hungary and Uzbekistan.
The foreign minister said a decision by Ukraine to remove OTP from the International Sponsors of War list was "a step in the right direction".
“All we’re asking Gergely Karácsony is who they got the money from,” the ruling Fidesz party said in a statement.
The government is not willing to participate in talks concerning the financing of arms deliveries to Ukraine as long as Hungary’s OTP Bank is blacklisted in Ukraine because it appears on a list of the international sponsors of war.
Minister Szijjártó told an OECD ministerial council meeting that the inclusion of OTP Bank on the list is “absolutely unfair” and “has nothing to do with reality”.
Minister Szijjártó added that due to restrictions concerning Chinese investments, the government will not support any further sanctions against Russia.
The foreign minister said it is “outrageous” that while Hungary is participating in the program under which the EU supports Ukraine, the Ukrainian anti-corruption agency has placed the OTP Group on its list of “international sponsors of war”.
Hungary’s OTP group plans to acquire yet another bank in neighboring Croatia, which would make it the second biggest player in the banking sector in the country