(ANSA-AFP) - BUDAPEST, 28 SET - Hungary's parliament on Monday lifted the immunity of Prime Minister Peter Magyar and two former ministers under nationalist ex-leader Viktor Orban, so they could be investigated in separate criminal cases. The probes against the Orban-era ministers -- who are suspected of corruption worth millions of euros (dollars) -- are the first graft investigations against top government figures from Orban's 16 years in power. Magyar, who is being probed separately for alleged theft, specifically asked for his immunity to be lifted so he could clear himself of "character assassination". Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of lifting his immunity and that of former culture minister Balazs Hanko and former development minister Miklos Sesztak. Orban's Fidesz party and its alley KDNP boycotted the session. The vote was in response to a request last week from prosecutors seeking to investigate the three. In Magyar's case, prosecutors allege the conservative pro-EU prime minister snatched a phone from a man filming him in a nightclub in 2024 and threw it into the River Danube. Magyar has called the case a "sham" and last week accused prosecutors of trying "to conflate" the ex-ministers' cases "with the attempt at political character assassination... which has already failed several times" (ANSA-AFP).