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 high prestige the company enjoys allows unhindered travel here at a time when Swiss authorities are registering businessmen travelling to Hungary and persons using Hungarian aircraft.”152 In all likelihood, André was not the only company to conduct transit deals with Hungarian companies, you can read about the huge significance of re-exports in more detail later, but its name also crops up in relation to the largest fraud of the socialist period. Between 1981 and 1989, the company transported Iranian oil through Mineralkontor, the subsidiary of Mineralimpex in Vienna, such that it made a loss of 10 cents on every dollar. The decades of fraud consumed hundreds of millions of US dollars at the expense of the Hungarian state.153 The substantial loss suffered on the Hungarian side appeared as profits made by the American partner. These funds were used to bribe the traders arranging the deals, and the party cadres, officials and financial experts who provided the opportunity for the economic crimes to continue undisturbed. State security spotted the anomaly behind the oil transfers and launched an investigation, also looking into money transfers and banking transactions. Although Mineralkontor s financial reports showed that the company was not turning a profit, the profit made by the operation of the Vienna subsidiary was regularly credited to the highly secret account number 1999 held with the MKB. This money would then be transferred to Andrés bank account at Cantrade Bank in Zurich. When counterintelligence investigated the matter in May 1984, there were four sums deposited in the account of 22 to 25 million dollars each, totalling nearly 100 million US dollars.154 This is merely a snapshot of the account to which amounts were transferred to André on a regular basis. Unfortunately, we cannot currently even estimate how much the total funds were, and we do not know exactly what role the enterprise in Lausanne played in the Iranian oil business, or when and how the company came into contact with Hungarian foreign trade. Nyerges ’ recruitment materials include a report in which Miklos Bauer assigned the Ministry of Foreign Trades 152 ÁBTL 3.1.2. M-19207. 147. Report, 7 July 1962 153 For more details, cf. Borvendég 2017, p. 111-160 154 Borvendég 2017, p. 122-123 At current values, the amount would be around HUF 125 billion. 58
