Ukrainian grain, Hungarian state money and political hypocrisy

While Viktor Orbán and Andrej Babiš campaigned against Ukrainian agricultural imports, companies linked to their business circles bought tens of millions of dollars' worth of Ukrainian grain and oilseeds. Two investigative articles by the Romanian RISE Project show how this trade intertwined Agrofert, founded by Babiš, the Hungarian Hodler Group, UBM and several Romanian companies, and how firms named in Ukrainian official investigations and Hungarian intermediaries ended up in the supply chain. The name of Péter Magyar also appears in the case; during the period examined, he was legal director at Hodler.

On June 16, 2026, Romana Puiuleț, a reporter for the Romanian outlet RISE Project, published two extensive investigative pieces on the journey of Ukrainian grain through Romania and Hungary. The article titled "War Profits: Orbán's and Babiš's Trusted Circles Trade Ukrainian Grain in Romania" reveals where Hungarian investors linked to Orbán's circle and Agrofert's interests meet in Romania. The other piece, "A Local Hub of Ukrainian Grain Trade," tracks a company in Alba County, Agropec Dionis, through whose dealings Ukrainian produce reached Hungarian processors and regional traders. The investigation is based on trade data, Hungarian, Romanian and Ukrainian company registries, files from Ukrainian criminal cases, and responses from the companies involved. Journalists from RISE and OCCRP compared ImportGenius data from February 2022 to December 2025 with the companies' domestic and EU transactions. This revealed not only the route of individual shipments but also the network of relationships among intermediaries, buyers and the business circles behind them.

The war created new routes and new intermediaries

The Russian invasion and the blockade of Black Sea ports fundamentally transformed Ukrainian agricultural exports, since a significant portion of grain, oilseeds and feed raw materials that had previously been shipped by sea had to be redirected overland, which increased the importance of neighboring countries' railways, border crossings, warehouses and trading companies. Alongside genuine producers, processors and major international traders, however, companies also appeared in the supply chain that Ukrainian authorities were investigating in connection with tax fraud and other economic crimes. RISE uses the term "black grain" for produce sold through such schemes — this refers not to the quality of the goods but to their financial and tax background.

According to the outlet's earlier investigations, in the first year of the war more than nine million tons of Ukrainian grain, worth about $2.2 billion, passed through parallel trading networks in Central and Eastern Europe. Companies under investigation by Ukrainian authorities acted as intermediaries for around 1.14 million tons of produce worth $269 million that passed through Hungary in 2022, while Romania served both as a transit country and a final market: in 2022 and the first half of 2023, 1.8 million tons of "black grain" worth $432 million were linked to the trade uncovered. According to RISE's account, the goods were quickly passed on, and a significant portion of the companies handling the deals were later dissolved, while export revenues never returned to the Ukrainian economy. The war-torn country thus lost precisely the tax revenues it needed for survival and defense. The author also presents another, interconnected circle of Hungarian intermediaries. Grain worth a total of $1.2 billion passed through several trading companies that had already been operating before the war. Some of the produce reached Romania through international trading intermediaries, and the intermediary companies were later liquidated — the nominal owners of some firms were vulnerable individuals, including former patients of a psychiatric clinic in Brno.

Anti-import politics, business built on Ukrainian grain

The fundamental contradiction of the two RISE articles is simple: while rejecting Ukrainian agricultural imports was a recurring element of the political messaging of both Viktor Orbán and Andrej Babiš, companies linked to their business circles purchased significant quantities of Ukrainian goods. In a video from March 2024, Babiš called Ukrainian agricultural products contaminated. Viktor Orbán attacked the imports citing the protection of Hungarian farmers and worked the issue of Ukrainian produce into his campaign against Brussels and Kyiv; both also criticized the economic costs of supporting Ukraine: Babiš emphasized staying out of the war, while Orbán claimed that Brussels wanted to drag Hungary into the conflict. At the same time, however, companies linked to Agrofert and to Orbán's circle purchased tens of millions of dollars' worth of Ukrainian agricultural products.

The relationship between Agrofert and Babiš has long been dogged by conflict-of-interest disputes. In 2021, the European Commission found that Babiš retained control of the corporate group even after placing it in trust funds, and that he could influence EU subsidies flowing to his own companies. According to RISE, Babiš became a direct owner again in October 2025, then placed Agrofert back into a trust fund, citing the need to eliminate the conflict of interest . The article also recalls the Stork's Nest case, which examined the acquisition of EU subsidies intended for small and medium-sized enterprises. In response to RISE's questions, Agrofert stated that Babiš is no longer a shareholder or beneficial owner of the group and does not take part in its management, and therefore they do not wish to comment on his political statements. Babiš had not responded to the journalists by the time the article was published.

The Czech giant and the Hungarian investor circle met at East Grain

The interests of Agrofert and the Hungarian Hodler Group converged at East Grain in Cluj-Napoca. In 2023, the Czech corporate group acquired a 65 percent stake in the grain trader, buying shares from several owners, including East Consulting, controlled by Hodler. East Consulting's stake fell from 39.02 percent to 12.62 percent, but it remained a minority shareholder in the company.

An important chronological detail: the 2022 transactions examined by RISE took place before Agrofert acquired majority ownership!

East Grain's earlier, dispersed ownership circle was organized around East Consulting, led by Miklós Kerezsi. East Grain's turnover grew significantly in the first year of the war: revenue of roughly 540 million lei in 2021 rose to nearly 700 million lei in 2022. The company, which works with more than 450 suppliers, operates in Romania, Hungary and Serbia, with its own logistics system and storage capacity of up to 80,000 tons. The next stage of expansion was the acquisition of Maragro in western Romania, completed in July 2025. The acquired company farms about 9,600 hectares, processes oilseeds and produces seed. According to documents cited by RISE, Alpár Kiss-Griz, a member of East Grain's board, was authorized to negotiate and sign the deal. He was also the one who answered the journalists' questions — according to him, none of the investment structures managed by Hodler financed the company directly or indirectly, and the connection lies in East Consulting's ownership stake. The company also stated that its affiliate East Silodep received support through the Pro Economica Foundation, funded by the Hungarian government, for building a silo in Chirileu (Kerelőszentpál).

Hungarian state capital behind Hodler and UBM

On the Hungarian side of the ownership network is Hodler Capital, an investor in agriculture and the food industry operating mainly in Hungary, Romania and Serbia. Its founder and managing director is Miklós Kerezsi, who, according to RISE, also played a role in the management of the Future Generation's Land Foundation, which manages state-owned agricultural assets and is linked to János Lázár. The outlet describes Hodler's ties to state funding and political actors based on a report by Transparency International Hungary. The fund manager's leadership previously included Csaba Lantos and János Csák as well. RISE also mentions a company involved in founding Hodler in connection with an EU-funded school digitalization program, in which OLAF recommended the recovery of €3.6 million and criminal liability was also established. The European Agricultural and Food Industry Private Equity Fund, managed by Hodler, launched in 2021, and RISE cites a 70 percent Eximbank participation and financing of about €31 million. Among the fund's goals was the purchase of agricultural land in neighboring countries, including Transylvania. The fund collects investors' money, which is managed by the fund manager, and investments are carried out through companies specially established or acquired for the purpose.

More than €4.3 million from the fund went to the Romanian company Poultry Integration, and through this company the system is linked to Poultry Investment, which expanded in the Transylvanian poultry industry. The company sought to organize breeding, hatching and feed production into a single production chain, so as to control as many work processes as possible from grain procurement to meat production and sale.

Part of this chain is the Chirileu (Kerelőszentpál) feed plant, where the ownership threads leading to Agrofert and Hodler directly converge.

Viktor Orbán inaugurated the plant in 2019 under the name UBM Feed, emphasizing in his speech Hungarian economic expansion realized with the support of state financial institutions, while Hunor Kelemen spoke of job creation and the strengthening presence of Hungarian capital in Romania. Since early 2026, the company has operated under the name Protena, owned in equal halves by East Grain, controlled by Agrofert, and Poultry Investment. The plant is capable of producing more than 200,000 tons of feed annually. According to an estimate cited in the article, it achieved revenue of 332 million lei in 2025, more than 50 percent — about 117 million lei — above the 2021 level. State capital also appears in the UBM group. RISE identified a 15.62 percent stake as the largest single shareholding, belonging to the state-backed private equity fund MFB Corporate Investment and Transaction. Transparency International examined this alongside the transparency problems of funds linked to István Tiborcz, Lőrinc Mészáros and Dániel Jellinek, but according to the resulting report, detailed data allowing individual investments to be tracked disappeared over time from MFB's reports, and the bank did not respond to the organization's questions, citing business secrecy.

Péter Magyar's role at Hodler

The name of Péter Magyar, the current prime minister, also appears in Hodler's history. Magyar worked as the fund manager's legal director until March 2024, and between 2022 and 2023 he was head of Good Farming. In response to RISE's questions, the group stated that Magyar wanted to move from the public to the private sector, that he was responsible for all legal matters at Hodler, and that he was involved in the activities of two portfolio companies. He resigned immediately after entering politics — however, the timeline also shows that he worked at Hodler throughout the period of the grain trade examined in the article. RISE does not claim that Magyar personally took part in carrying out the grain deals presented, but the politician's significance lies in the fact that as legal director he was responsible for the group's legal affairs during the period when Hodler's interests were present in the trading networks under investigation.

Between March 2022 and March 2023, East Grain imported corn, wheat, barley, soybean meal and oil from Ukraine worth $4.8 million. Soybean meal is the residual material left over after oil extraction, used as feed, meaning the purchases extended beyond narrowly defined grain to other raw materials for the food and feed industry. In 2022, the Cluj-Napoca-based company also bought from Viterra Hungary for €237,000 — at this company, RISE identified $12 million worth of Ukrainian imports linked to the "black grain" trade in 2022 and the first half of 2023. East Grain also traded with companies in the UBM group that, according to the article, had transactions worth more than $1.3 million with Ukrainian shell companies.

Viterra Hungary Kft. was acquired by Louis Dreyfus Company Hungary Kft. in September 2025, and has operated under this name ever since. (Editor's note)

In one deal described in detail, trade data for November 2022 showed five corn transactions linked to TOV SK-Agro, worth a total of $584,000. The recorded price was $130 per ton; RISE compared this with the roughly $270 port price in Constanța. The Hungarian branch of the trade was East Grain Hungary, founded by the Romanian company in 2017. The company moves 150,000–200,000 tons of goods annually, buying from Romania and Hungary and then selling mainly to mills, feed plants and other processors in Central and Eastern Europe. It is also present in Western European and Black Sea markets. Between January 2023 and October 2025, East Grain Hungary imported about $18 million worth of soybean meal and feed industry by-products from Ukraine, including, between April and October 2025, 73 transactions worth $4.4 million with Katerynovilsky Elevator, part of the MHP group. The ultimate owner of MHP, listed on the London Stock Exchange, is Yuriy Kosyuk, a former adviser to Petro Poroshenko. The Hungarian subsidiary also supplied its Romanian parent company, selling it goods worth €5 million in 2022. East Grain's Hungarian buyers included Agrofert group's NT Élelmiszertermelő és Kereskedelmi Kft., even before the Czech group acquired a majority stake in the Cluj-Napoca company. RISE showed sales of €6.8 million to NT in 2022. Direct Ukrainian purchases also increased. NT bought sunflower seed worth about $6 million between September 2022 and March 2023, while Agrofert bought corn and rapeseed worth roughly $13 million between 2022 and 2025.

By way of comparison: from 2011 until the start of the war, Agrofert's imports from Ukraine consisted mainly of nitrogen fertilizer and titanium ore, worth about $3.1 million in total. After the war, therefore, not only did volume grow, but the range of products purchased also changed significantly.

Among NT's suppliers, RISE also identified a Ukrainian company founded by Oleg Kiyasko. Kiyasko was detained by Ukraine's security service in 2020 in connection with a Kharkiv-based group suspected of violent crimes; investigators linked him to the circle of Vadym Kazarcev, known as "the Prince." Between November 2022 and March 2023, NT bought 1,200 tons of sunflower seed from this company for $480,000, an average price of $400 per ton, which RISE found to be about 26 percent lower than the market price level it used for comparison. It bought a total of 2,600 tons from two other suppliers for about $650,000, at $250 per ton.

UBM's tens of millions of dollars in Ukrainian imports

The UBM group was also a major Hungarian player in the trade uncovered by RISE. Its Bucharest company, UBM Agri Trade, established in 2017 with Romanian-Hungarian capital, imported $52 million worth of Ukrainian agricultural goods between 2022 and 2025, of which $1.1 million worth came from companies under official investigation. The Hungarian parent company, UBM Agro Zrt., bought a further $18 million worth of Ukrainian grain between December 2022 and March 2024, while East Grain sold a further €1.6 million worth of grain to the Romanian UBM Agri Trade. In December 2024, Miklós Kerezsi also sold a company in Satu Mare to UBM; this company had previously participated in founding UBM Feed. Among UBM Agri Trade's Ukrainian suppliers was Yavkinsky Elevator, from which it bought corn worth half a million dollars. The company, linked to grain trader Rafael Gorojan, also appears in a Ukrainian investigation into unpaid taxes involving about three hundred companies; East Grain also exported more than $52 million worth of goods to two British companies also linked to Gorojan, and supplied international traders, including Viterra Romania.

From another supplier, Agrolight Company, UBM Agri Trade bought 1,600 tons of corn in 67 transactions in September 2022 for $320,000 — RISE compared the price of $200 per ton with the then Constanța port price of about $292, finding a difference of about 32 percent. Agrolight was part of a Sumy-based corporate group established before the war; the group's companies were transferred to Uzbek and Kazakh citizens in 2023, and Agrolight itself changed its name in January 2023.

The purchases of NT, East Grain and UBM all lead back to the same Romanian family business, Agropec Dionis. The company, operating in Cetatea de Baltă (Küküllővár), Alba County, about forty kilometers from the Chirileu feed plant, is controlled by Dionisie Vasile Nagy and his son, Natanael Nagy. Since the start of the war, Agropec has imported more than $113 million worth of sunflower, corn, soy, wheat and barley from Ukraine. The company's turnover jumped from about €53 million in 2021 to about €130 million in 2022. Of the imports, sunflower seed worth $3.3 million came from eleven Ukrainian companies investigated in a large-scale grain trade and tax fraud case. In 2022, Agropec sold most of its produce to NT: goods worth 81 million lei, roughly €16.4 million, went to Agrofert's Hungarian processor, while in the same year it did business worth €808,000 with East Grain and about €250,000 with UBM Agri Trade.

The Cetatea de Baltă company was thus simultaneously a supplier to the Hungarian oil producer and to the two regional traders.

As turnover grew, transport and storage infrastructure expanded as well. In 2023, Agropec opened a warehouse in Halmeu, near the Ukrainian border, at the railway junction where goods arriving from Ukraine must be transferred due to differing track gauges. Through an affiliated company, the owners modernized farms, buying several thousand head of cattle, trucks and a grain barge. The corporate group also traded fertilizer and salt purchased from a Romanian state-owned company and shipped on to Ukraine. RISE also presented footage of a barge belonging to Agropec's sister company, Speranța EL. The vessel was loading grain at the port of Reni, Ukraine, in July 2023 when the area came under a Russian drone attack. After Agropec partially split in 2023, the company itself focused on grain trading; earlier, during the coronavirus pandemic, it had received a total of 8.3 million lei in non-refundable grants and state guarantees linked to preferential loans.

The family that expanded from the grain business also acquired an interest in Romania's meat industry. In 2022, Natanael Nagy bought 32 percent of the Carna Carpatica slaughterhouse for 717,000 euros from Péter Tamás Nagy, who had previously served as agricultural state secretary for the RMDSZ (Hungarian party in Romania). Péter Tamás Nagy had joined the company that same March, meaning only a few months passed between his acquiring the stake and passing it on. Through the sale, Natanael Nagy became a business partner of Samuel Widmer, founder of Karpaten Meat, and Cosmin Moldovan, owner of the Cluj-Napoca-based meat processing network Moldovan Carmangerie. RISE also recalls that Péter Tamás Nagy was detained in 2015. The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) accused him, together with the ministry's secretary general, of demanding forty thousand euros from an agricultural business in exchange for a ministry contract. He was acquitted at first instance, the case later fell under the statute of limitations, and he currently heads the Mureș County Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Directorate.

Investigated Ukrainian suppliers and strikingly low prices

Among Agropec's Ukrainian purchases, the case of Etalon Auto Trans stands out. This company was one of eleven suppliers investigated by authorities from which the Romanian company bought goods. Between April and June 2022, Agropec bought sunflower seed worth 850,000 dollars from Etalon in ten transactions, at 396 dollars per ton. RISE found this to be about 41 percent lower than the market reference price of 668 dollars it cited. Etalon's head, Pavlo Znaharenko, also appeared in another case, investigated by Ukraine's security service, concerning the diversion of budget funds. According to investigators, his business recorded sales of goods and services that were never actually delivered or performed. There was a striking discrepancy between the company's data and the owner's living conditions. Znaharenko lived in a modest apartment in Odesa, while the company sold grain worth more than forty million dollars. The business was relocated to Kyiv in January 2023, and its nominal owner was replaced by a man who also appeared in around one hundred fifty other companies.

Besides Ukrainian suppliers, Hungarian intermediaries also served Agropec. In 2022, the Romanian company bought goods worth 350,000 euros from Korporian Trend. The company was founded in February of that year, and just ten months later it was placed under forced liquidation. RISE journalists met the company's nominal owner, Marianna Kopor, at a café in Budapest. The woman said she had sold her name for a thousand euros to the business, but did not know who its actual beneficiaries were. She mentioned a man named Attila who ran things from behind the scenes, though she could not identify him precisely either. According to Kopor, no goods actually arrived in Hungary: the transactions there existed only on paper. Money arriving in the company's account was moved through several people before being withdrawn in cash. For this, she received five percent of the sum, and later brought others into the scheme as well. The story illustrates just how great the distance could be between a nominal owner and the actual operators. Kopor, along with her two daughters, moved frequently because she could not pay rent, even as significant sums passed through the business registered in her name.

Agropec's other Hungarian intermediary, LSL Tradinghouse Kft., was registered at the same address. According to RISE, within a few months the company brokered Ukrainian grain worth 26.9 million dollars, before being dissolved in 2023 for failing to pay taxes. Of its purchases, 25 million dollars' worth of wheat and corn came from Kyiv-based Trepfin. This company was linked to a network involving three hundred businesses and also appeared in a Ukrainian criminal case concerning abuse of office. The investigation examined how customs officials in Odesa allowed risky companies to carry out export activities, despite earlier warnings about them. LSL's name also came up in a Romanian criminal case. In 2023, DIICOT (the Romanian directorate for investigating organized crime and terrorism) brought charges against an illegal cigarette manufacturing and trafficking network that, according to the indictment, illegally produced around 18.8 million cigarettes and nearly twenty tons of tobacco near Iași between August 2021 and July 2022. In these proceedings, LSL appears as an interested party seeking the return of seized assets; RISE emphasizes that the company was not among the defendants. Journalists also asked Natanael Nagy about these purchases and business relationships. Agropec's head refused by phone to answer a question about cooperation with NT, and then hung up when Carna Carpatica came up. The company later stated in writing that it operates in compliance with Romanian and EU law, that authorities have inspected it multiple times, and that it cooperates with the relevant institutions. However, it did not provide detailed explanations for individual transactions. In its view, it is accountable only within the institutional framework set out by law, not to investigative journalists.

Political slogans and business interests lived in two separate worlds

The two RISE investigations trace a path from Ukrainian exporters through Hungarian intermediaries and Romanian traders all the way to major processing and investment groups. According to the data uncovered, companies linked to the business circles of politicians who publicly attacked Ukrainian imports were themselves present in this trade as buyers, intermediaries and investors. Some of their purchases led back to Ukrainian companies that had been the subject of official investigations, and at several points in the network, Hungarian state capital and Romanian public funds also appeared. East Grain and Agrofert explained their purchases as adaptation to the shipping routes and altered supply reshaped by the war, while Hodler emphasized its market operations and long-term role as an investor. This, however, does not resolve the political contradiction at the heart of the story: while Orbán and Babiš presented Ukrainian grain to their voters as a threat, for the corporate circles linked to them the same goods represented a lucrative business opportunity — and for Ukraine, a loss of customs and tax revenue.

Translated and edited by: Anna Karczag

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