Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
‘THE HUNGARIAN MAFIA’ - The red octopus
FABULOUS SPY GAMES Gal was probably János Endre Gál, later CEO of the Hungarian Foreign Trade Bank, who negotiated the return of János Fekete from Vienna in November 1956 (Fekete was stranded in the neighbouring capital during the days of the revolution).117 Gál had been head of division at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs from 1950 onwards, and several instances of financial abuse are linked to his name. These never made it to prosecution and trial, even though they were noted by state security, and Gál ’s career continued uninterrupted; CIA information suggests that he enjoyed protection because he was doing shady business not on his own but on someone else’s behalf. He was reported to have travelled to Czechoslovakia as early as 1945, where he stole 12,000 crowns and 14,000 pengő from a driver. The crime was revealed, and the party committee obligated Gál to return the money, although the pengő had been completely devalued by the time he complied.118 As a ministry official ‘he committed several acts of a sabotage nature’,119 for example, he would delay certain consignments, for which the Hungarian party had to pay considerable sums in damages, or would make certain foreign trade companies pay off claims for liabilities made by foreign companies without the Hungarian party ever acknowledging these as justified. Using this method, he passed on more than 500,000 US dollars to an Argentine company in 1952, but state security was informed more than once that he paid tens of thousands of dollars to western companies on the basis of make-believe claims in damages, so the money required for the secret assignments was sucked out of the Hungarian economy. As the head of the Hungarian trade office in Bern during 1957- 58, he had only 10 percent of the Omega watches purchased on behalf of Elektroimpex actually delivered to Hungary, the rest he sold with the help of a Swiss trader in Switzerland and other western countries, bypassing Omegas trade network. This caused damage not only to the Hungarian economy, but also to the watchmaker, which chose to sever ties with Elektroimpex in return. Gál probably engaged in several similar deals to help fund the international 117 Benda 1999, p. 131 118 ÁBTL 3.2.4. K-614, p. 19 Report, 14 May 1960 119 Ibid. p. 20 48
