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 secret man behind the scenes: János Nyerges
FABULOUS SPY GAMES commercial company Intra Handels AG was founded by Edgar Woog, leader of the German Communists in Switzerland, and his wife Lydia Woog, in 1946. It was a requirement to use its services whenever a trade deal was made between the Balkans and Western Europe.146 This kind of intermediary trade was the basis of the indirect funding mechanism of left-wing movements and was built by the Soviets in the years between the two Wars. In the free world, Communist parties also had the opportunity to engage in enterprises to allow them to establish companies that barely pursued any productive activity, but were able to engage as third parties to act as mediators between importers and exporters for a commission, with their fee due to their owner, the Communist Party. The heyday of these businesses came with the Cold War, since the establishment of the Iron Curtain imposed restrictions on relationships of any kind between the two worlds. This made trade controllable through nationalisation, which allowed the involvement of intermediary companies to become mandatory in foreign trade deals. Intra Handels, therefore, specialised in business in the Balkans, while Contrax AC, owned by a communist leader in Basel known as Hans Adam, was also engaged in the same activity.147 Transmontan AG was among the party companies in Switzerland. It was established with the purpose of making involvement in a Hungarian-Soviet mining company attractive to Western capital.148 Unfortunately, American intelligence does not explain in detail which mining company this referred to, but this piece of information is definitely intriguing and provides food for thought as it suggests that a company was established in the Alps with the intention of engaging Western capital in the industry parallel to the nationalisation of mines. The mining company mentioned could well have been Maszovol, the Hungarian-Soviet Crude Oil Shareholding Company, which was founded in 1946 to drill oil wells in the Great Plain. Later, Nyerges ’ reports mention the fact that Switzerland was already involved in Hungarian oil transports in Gombosi ’ s time and this also 146 CIA, FOIA, Hungarian Economic Activities in Western Europe, 17 November 1949 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82-00457R003600470003-2.pdf (Downloaded on: 16 August 2019) 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. 56
