Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
‘FABULOUS’ IN HUNGARY - The role of Frankfurt
'FABULOUS' IN HUNGARY another state security agent who worked with the trade representative of the British Embassy in Budapest reported that Sándor Makk paid him a visit, asking him to help move over to the British area because “the German line was slipping out from under him”.306 Sebestyént fight against the agents of civilian intelligence was successful, the question is what underlying considerations this fight was built on. 306 ÁBTL 3.1.2. M-21284/1 p. 74 Note, 26 February 1959 307 For more details, cf Borvendég 2018 The coming period was characterised by the trade offices being divided between the two intelligence services: some belonged to civilian intelligence, while others fell under military competence. Investigating the different trade offices requires further research, but it seems certain that those operating within the competence zone of MNVK-2 (mostly in Milan and Rome, in addition to Frankfurt), and those where the staff included more soldiers because they were located in a war zone (such as the Middle East) primarily employed the people of military intelligence, and the dossiers revealed so far show that the influence of the foreign trade lobby was greater at these offices than elsewhere. The documents of the investigation in the early 1970s against the head of Metalimpex, István Dévai, a committed source of MNVK-2 mentioned previously, (who was one of the traders transferred earlier to Frankfurt by Sebestyén) provide a picture of the conflict between military and civilian intelligence, which can be attributed not only to professional rivalry, but was also intended to stem the illegal financial sources of the soldiers originating from trade.307 This also implies that the fight between the different interest groups, or at least those opposing the foreign trade lobby, or who missed out on it, is reflected in the conflict between civilian and military intelligence. It is possible that the conflict was sharpened or exacerbated precisely by the changes the trade network was undergoing, which means that this network of nexuses was moved to military intelligence from their civilian counterparts after 1956. By the late 1950s, a closed circle formed around Sebestyén in Frankfurt, which was supported by Nyerges and Fekete from back in Hungary. One of their most spectacular achievements was that they were able to increase and guarantee 115
