Former Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjarto resigned as deputy and will work at BYD

Former Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto will step down as a member of the national parliament, due to an offer to start working in a senior position at the Chinese car company BYD. According to Szijjarto on July 15, he has already submitted his resignation.

"The reason was to receive a very prestigious offer to take an international position in one of the key companies in the global economy. BYD is one of the most striking examples of success in the automotive industry over the past 20 years," Szijjarto said on his Facebook page (owned by Meta, whose activities are recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation).

The position of a former diplomat at BYD will relate to "managing the group's external relations and the development of new business lines." The Chinese carmaker built its first factory in Europe for the production of electric vehicles in the Hungarian city of Szeged (Chongrad-Chanad region), and Szijjarto actively supported the project at the political level.

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Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on March 23 that Szijjarto's phone number was given to Ukrainian intelligence for wiretapping. The country's Justice minister was instructed to immediately investigate the information about the incident. The representative of the then Hungarian government, Zoltan Kovacs, in the social network X (ex. Twitter) reported that two phone numbers were given to the foreign intelligence service by journalist Szabolcea Pani. In the conversation, he said that the surveillance system involves establishing who called whom and when.