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 SPY GAMES until Paris was liberated.”317 He returned in 1945 and held leading positions at various organisations, working first at the Ministry of Reconstructions, then at the Reparations Office.318 Pikier actively participated in nationalising the electricity industry and in bringing power to villages. His acquaintance with Sebestyén dates back to these times. Internal reckoning caught up with Pikier, too. He was in prison between 1951 and 1954, after which he worked at the Ministry of Heavy Industry together with Sebestyén and Endre Simon, whom we mentioned earlier and who became Sebestyént right-hand man in Frankfurt. In 1957, Sebestyén and Pikier decided together to request a posting abroad: As revealed earlier, Sebestyén was looking for a lucrative job at a trade office, while Pikier wanted to go to Vienna.319 He used his acquaintances to be transferred to the International Atomic Energy Agency, established in 1957, where he represented Hungary until 1962. According to state security, he was also involved in smuggling during the years of service, using his Mercedes bearing diplomatic plates to carry out his illegal activities, while “he gave no assistance at all to the competent Hungarian authorities regarding scientific fields and fields important for other reasons in spite of repeated requests and his promises” or it seems at least that he was not willing to cooperate with the secret service of the Ministry of Interior.320 317 Remembering Ferenc Pikier Magyar Nemzet, 27 June 1979, p. 7 318 In 1948, Ferenc Pikier wrote a study on the reparations Hungary was obligated to pay after WWII. He wrote the following on the disproportionately and unfairly great burden that was weighing down on Hungarian society and the looted and destroyed economy: “After the siege, when we stood here stripped of our national assets and bombed out among ruined factory buildings without functioning machinery, many people believed that Hungarian industry could never be revived. Reparations were the first impulse at the time to kickstart production and thus also the economy as a whole. It was the reparations that gave companies the opportunity, and forced them at the same time, to repair their buildings and machinery quickly, and to start production. It was the reparations that forced companies and the authorities alike to rebuild foreign trade relationships without delay to purchase raw materials.” Pikier 1948, p. 2 319 ÁBTL 3.1.5. 0-12344/2 p. 18 Report, 13 October 1958 320 ÁBTL 3.1.5. 0-15829/1, p. 51-52 Executive report, 23 June 1969 In 1962, the Romanian secret service warned Hungarian counterintelligence that a Vienna-based Zionist organisation was involved in large-scale smuggling, 118
