It was already known that the Hungarian government was helping Marcin Romanowski, a Polish politician accused of corruption, to flee from the Polish justice system.

Direkt36 has now revealed that the ties between the government and Romanowski, who is facing an arrest warrant, are even closer than that. The former Polish deputy justice minister is currently living in the apartment of a staff member of the Fidesz parliamentary group.

One of the owners of the apartment in Buda is Dávid Zsolt Párkai, who, according to a document obtained by Direkt36, works as a “personal secretary assisting with parliamentary activities” in the Fidesz parliamentary group. According to the contract, parliamentary group leader Máté Kocsis hired Párkai in September 2025 to work eight hours a day.

Direkt36 journalists also visited Romanowski in person at the property, but, as can be seen in our video below, he did not answer our questions:

Párkai confirmed to Direkt36 that Romanowski lives in a property he co-owns. When asked about his ties to the Fidesz parliamentary group and Máté Kocsis, he said that he works in parliament not as a secretary but as a legal expert.

The document in our possession states that Párkai’s employer is Máté Kocsis, and his name appears at the bottom of the contract, Párkai told Direkt36 that the contract was not actually signed by Kocsis himself, but by György Balla, the deputy leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group. (We are not publishing the document to protect our sources, and the signature on it is difficult to read, so it is unclear who it belongs to.)

“More than a thousand people work under Kocsis, so in this sense, he is everyone’s employer in the faction,” emphasized Párkai, who did not provide a substantive answer as to how he got a job in the Fidesz faction. “I know a lot of people, someone recommended me,” he said, but he did not reveal who that person was.

Párkai claimed that Máté Kocsis had nothing to do with Romanowski ending up in his property. He emphasized that the Polish politician had already been staying in his apartment before he was appointed to his parliamentary position. This may indeed be the case, as documents obtained by Direkt36 show that Párkai has been renting his property to Romanowski since December 2024.

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Párkai stated that Romanowski has been living in his apartment since he was granted asylum, meaning the politician is legally residing in the property.

However, Romanowski’s status may soon change. At his April 13 press conference, incoming Prime Minister Péter Magyar announced that after the government is formed, the Tisza Party will review the situation of politicians who received political asylum from the Orbán government but are facing convictions or court cases in their home countries—including Romanowski’s asylum status.

In response to our question on this matter, Párkai stated that if Romanowski’s status were to change with the formation of the new government, the contract would be terminated as soon as his stay became illegal. According to him, Romanowski covers his own expenses, though he did not wish to elaborate on the details of the lease agreement. We also asked him how he came into contact with the Polish politician, to which he replied that Romanowski had approached him because he saw that his company was involved in property rentals.

The other owner of the apartment rented by Romanowski — which was first reported by the Polish public broadcaster TVP’s investigative program called Raport Specjalny and by Átlátszó — is Dávid Párkai’s brother, Dániel Párkai. Átlátszó previously reported that Dániel Párkai is the founder and chairman of the board of trustees of a foundation in which Örs Farkas, the State Secretary for Civil Intelligence Services at the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office, also served as a director. The Oeconomus Economic Research Foundation, an organization that calls itself an analytical institute, has received annual funding since its launch in 2019 from the Lajos Batthyány Foundation, which is also supported by funds from the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office.

Located in the same building is one of Dávid Párkai’s companies, Patr-event Magyarország Kft., which, according to a report by Telex, received 450 million forints in funding from the National Cultural Fund of Hungary for organizing musical events. The Párkai brothers’ joint company’s office is also located in the building. Among other things, the company is engaged in real estate brokerage and property management.

The Fidesz faction’s press office responded to our questions sent to Máté Kocsis, stating that the “faction leader has nothing to do” with the Polish politician’s “asylum application and the events related to it.” They added that “the faction leader is the employer of all parliamentary staff, but he does not supervise their daily work, and in most cases he does not sign their contracts either, as is the case mentioned by us.”

Law was changed to favor him

Marcin Romanowski served as Deputy Minister of Justice in the Law and Justice (PiS) government, an ally of Fidesz. The party lost the 2023 election and thus went into opposition.

Romanowski was subsequently charged by the Polish prosecutor’s office with participation in an organized criminal group, and a total of 19 charges were brought against him. According to the prosecutor’s office, Romanowski and other politicians illegally channeled 39 million euros from a judicial fund to organizations linked to the party and procured the Pegasus spyware.

Romanowski was taken into custody by Polish authorities in July 2024, but was quickly released because he enjoyed immunity as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). PACE did not decide to suspend his immunity until later, in October.

Romanowski was granted asylum by the Hungarian government in December 2024. Former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro was also involved in this case; he and his wife were also granted asylum by the Hungarian government at the end of 2025.

Romanowski denies having committed any crime, claiming he is being targeted for political reasons. Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, said in 2024 that there is clear evidence that the principles of a fair trial had not been upheld in Romanowski’s case, which is why he was granted asylum. According to the minister, Romanowski should not have been arrested, as he had parliamentary immunity thanks to his PACE membership.

In February Polish authorities issued a European arrest warrant for Romanowski. At the same time, the Orbán government has already attempted to pass legislation ensuring that Romanowski and other political exiles cannot be extradited to their home countries even after a change in government. The essence of the law passed in 2025 is that if a Hungarian court orders the execution of a European arrest warrant, the Supreme Court may overturn the decision at the initiative of the Prosecutor General.

The case of the former deputy justice minister has heightened tensions between Budapest and Warsaw. The Orbán government’s pro-Russian policy had already soured its relations with the previous government, in which Romanowski served, but its relationship with the current government, led by the center-right Civic Platform, has become even more contentious.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski called the Orbán government’s decision to grant Romanowski asylum an “unfriendly move,” and following the decision, the Hungarian ambassador in Warsaw was summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry.

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The Hungarian government did more than just grant Romanowski asylum. He was given a position at the pro-government Center for Fundamental Rights where he became the head of the Hungarian-Polish Institute of Freedom. According to its website, the institute researches the values that have defined Hungarian-Polish relations across eras and political systems.

“Fostering and protecting these values is particularly important in the shadow of today’s threats, such as federalization that runs counter to state sovereignty and national identity, woke ideology, green jihad, or even illegal migration,” the website explains about the institute.