The editor-in-chief of a leading liberal newspaper has warned that "no-one and nothing" is safe in Viktor Orban's Hungary, a week after the publication was shut down amid government pressure.

“If this could be done to Nepszabadsag, then no-one and nothing is safe,” Andras Muranyi told The Sunday Telegraph.

The dramatic demise of the broadsheet, which had a reputation for using investigative journalism to unearth nefarious government activity, shocked Hungary and fuelled concerns over the health of the free media in the Central European country.

Staff at the paper received a courier-delivered letter stating that the paper was ceasing production with immediate effect on Saturday last week. They were also barred from the paper’s offices, so could not collect personal items, and stopped from accessing their email accounts and any work they had in production.

“Papers airing the government’s dirty linen can easily find themselves suffering a similar fate,” Mr Muranyi said.

In a statement published on the paper’s website, Mediaworks, the paper’s Austrian owners, cited economic problems for the closure, saying Nepszabadsag had generated a “considerable net loss”. The company also said it was seeking to restructure the struggling newspaper rather than killing it for good.

But Hungary has been rife with speculation that the government of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, brought pressure to bear on Mediaworks, which also owns a number of other Hungarian publications, to silence the dissenting voice.