Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
ATTACK ON THE OMFB - The Siemens lobby
FABULOUS SPY GAMES with a detention intelligence agent who gained the trader’s trust and coaxed a lot of information out of him. According to Simon, the details of the cooperation were discussed with the competent officials of the Ministry of Foreign Trade in May 1973, before the framework agreement was made. The meeting was chaired by Péter Vályi,476 Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, who played a major role in elaborating the new economic mechanism deputising for the minister for foreign trade. Deputy minister Jenő Baczoni protested angrily against the signing of the agreement. The outcome of the meeting was that the Ministry of Foreign Trade did not support the OMFB’s draft agreement, which allegedly made Sebestyén lash out angrily against Baczoni and those who shared his views: “ Sebestyén was furious, he had a wild outburst and even wrote a letter to everyone who opposed his plan.”477 Despite this, the framework agreement was concluded soon afterwards. We also know that the Soviets had signed a similar cooperation agreement with Siemens previously, so the chances of Sebestyén ’s initiative being successful were already high, since it must have enjoyed support from ‘Big Brother’. Several months later, Péter Vályi died in an unfortunate accident: during his factory visit to the Lenin Kohászati Művek steelworks, he was escorted to an area of the factory (the planks running along directly next to the furnaces), where civilians were not normally permitted to enter. Several incomprehensible circumstances of the tragedy are cause for speculation to this day.478 The central assumption 476 Péter Vályi (1919-1973) graduated as a chemical engineer in 1942. He was a member of the Communist Party from 1945. From 1948, he was a rapporteur of the National Planning Office in addition to being a lecturer at the University of Economics. Vályi became the general manager of Chinoin in 1953 and was a senior official at the Ministry for Heavy Industry from 1954. Between 1955 and 1967, he worked as the deputy chairman of the National Planning Office and was finance minister from 1967 to 1971. In 1971, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. In September 1973, he visited the Lenin Kohászati Művek steelworks, where he fell to his death beside one of the furnaces. 477 ÁBTL 3.1.9 V-160121/3, p. 99 Report, 3 August 1973 478 No exploratory work based on historical research has been performed to this day with regard to Péter Vályi’s death. This is not likely to occur in future due to an absence of sources, but a lot of studies have been published taking a position for or against the conspiracy theories revolving around the strange accident involving the economic politician. Two examples from these papers: Máté Fábián rejects the possibility of the accident being intentional (Fábián 2014), while Sándor Balázs György refuses to rule it out. (György 2015) 170
