00:03Welcome to Euronews' fact-checking show, The Cube.
00:06On 21 July, Hungarian prosecutors raided data servers linked to Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party
00:12as part of a corruption investigation.
00:15The party is accused of misusing public cultural grants to support its election campaign.
00:21The raids triggered a wave of reactions from former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,
00:25Fidesz figures, and the party's allies.
00:27Orbán described the investigation as politically motivated.
00:31His former political director told us the raid was an attempt to put pressure on the political party.
00:36But prosecutors said they seized the servers because the volume of data combined with a lack of cooperation
00:42made it impossible to back it up on site.
00:45French national rally MP Marine Le Pen and Italian minister Matteo Salvini voiced their support for Fidesz,
00:50claiming that the seizure of the party's communication systems and databases amounted to a violation of the rule of law.
00:56But experts we spoke to found no evidence that this was the case.
01:00I don't see any additional or heightened danger to rule of law and safeguard of human rights.
01:09I think that these processes currently are in conformity with the Hungarian legal provisions,
01:16are in conformity with European human rights standards.
01:20All of the guarantees are available.
01:23All of the possible judicial options are opened.
01:26Political analysts told us that Fidesz's claims that the investigation represented a breach of the rule of law
01:32followed a familiar political pattern.
01:34They stressed that the investigation should also be viewed in the context of Hungary's changing political landscape.
01:41In May, Petr Maldiáll was sworn in as prime minister and soon launched Operation Purgatory,
01:46an initiative to dismantle what he calls the mafia state established under Orbán.
