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’ - A chink on the peace front: Frankfurt am Main
'THE HUNGARIAN MAFIA' foreign trade and economic expert to the Kádár regime. He was fluent in six languages and, although he never made it higher up the ladder than the post of head of division, his informal power may have surpassed even that of a minister. From the 1960s on, state security could no longer employ him as an agent, but they could rely on him as a secret colleague or an official contact due to his position in the Ministry,162 although he still served economic intelligence by evaluating documents for a long time to come.163 The intelligence service wished to gain information related to political and economic intelligence, but Nyerges is likely to have been rather selective about what he chose to share, as he did not report in detail about his negotiations with Emil Hoffman, or on the business deals he made with the partners he knew from the foreign trade office in Frankfurt. One cannot rule out the possibility he already had close relationships with military intelligence officials and its committed sources, since the foreign traders serving in Frankfurt were MNVK-2 men. At the end of the 1960s, military intelligence did indeed seek out Nyerges to recruit him, but in the absence of researchable documents, the results of these approaches are unknown.164 162 ÁBTL 3.2.1 Bt-481/2, p. 38 Recommendation, 30 April 1966 163 Germuska 2018, p. 247-248 164 ÁBTL 3.2.1 Bt-481/2, p. 63 Service request, 20 March 1968 A chink on the peace front: Frankfurt am Main As the financial centre of the world, Switzerland was indispensable when it came to maintaining and financing economic ties across the Iron Curtain, but we previously learned that the building of trade routes started in West Germany, with a background in the secret service and with help from representatives of Nazi Germany. 61
