“I delivered bags of money from Mogilevich to the police chief, and more for Orbán": Former Budapest gang member László Kovács tells all

My name is László Kovács. I was born in 1963 in Ukraine, but my father is Hungarian, and I speak Hungarian fluently. I am a professional athlete, a bodybuilder, but in the 1990s, it was necessary to earn a living somehow, and in 1994 my childhood friend Alexander Kirichanin and I started a small business buying vodka in Hungary and selling it in Ukraine.

We were not allowed to trade in peace for long. At one point, while Kirichanin and I were having lunch in a pizzeria in Budapest, Igor Korol sat down with his men — about eight of them. Then it began: “Who are you? This is our city. We control everything here. Everyone pays us.” I said, “Maybe everyone pays, but we will not.” Korol tried to force my head down to the table, but he failed — at that time I weighed about 110 kilograms. One of his associates stabbed me with a knife. The wound was not deep, but there was a lot of blood. The argument continued, and I had no intention of backing down.

Then Korol told me that my behavior had impressed him. He knew that I spoke Hungarian, while he and all his men had moved from Ukraine without knowing a word of Hungarian, so they needed a translator. In the end, Korol offered me a job.

Korol’s group was mainly engaged in extorting nightclubs for protection money. Almost everyone paid — either to Korol or to a rival Ukrainian group led by Leonid Stitsyura. Both groups were subordinate to Semion Mogilevich — “Seva,” as he was called — who at that time was at the height of his power, the boss of bosses. He lived in Budapest then and hardly ever left his luxurious, lavishly furnished old house on Benczúr Street. Food and women were brought to him there. All information flowed there, and all decisions were made there. Seva had groups everywhere: the Solntsevo group in Russia, as well as groups across Ukraine and in the United States, though I only knew about that from hearsay.

Although Seva was the boss, Korol did not pay him anything. For Seva, protection payments from nightclubs were small change. They did not interest him. He was focused on much more serious operations with profits in the millions. For example, they added dye to diesel fuel and sold it as heating oil, which at the time was not subject to taxation — the dye could later be easily removed, allowing them to save millions in taxes. Seva ran this business together with Hungary’s chief of police at the time, Sándor Pintér.

Seva’s connection with Pintér was not limited to business. As head of the police, Pintér could make any criminal case disappear, and Mogilevich regularly paid him for those services. These payments had to be made often, once or twice a week, because Budapest in the 1990s was like Chicago a century ago. Hardly a week went by without someone being shot or blown up. I know about these bribes very well, because I myself acted as a courier.

Igor Korol and I would go to Mogilevich’s office, where he would hand Igor a small package (usually amounts of $50,000-$100,000, though I never counted it). After that, I had to deliver it to “Shoni Bácsi” — that was Pintér’s nickname, meaning “Uncle Shoni.” I would go to a designated spot: most often on Wesselényi Street, but sometimes on Petőfi Sándor Street. A car would pull up at the corner, usually a dark blue Škoda. I would get into the back seat where Pintér was already sitting, hand him the package, and get out at the next corner. We did not even talk. At most we exchanged a few words.

They somehow arranged in advance what the money was for, and I was not told the details, although sometimes I could guess. A murder would take place, then money would be passed through me. Of course, I drew my own conclusions. For example, I remember a Ukrainian guy named Slavik. He was shot through the window of his car, and when I delivered money to Pintér afterward, I assumed it was to have the case closed. That was only my guess, but the case was indeed closed.

Sometimes I was also instructed to deliver money to another man, named Dietmar Clodo. He was a German of Jewish origin who rented a house in the small town of Szentendre, not far from Budapest. I did not visit him very often, perhaps six to eight times. I would enter the hallway, hand over the money, exchange a few words in Hungarian, and leave. Only later did I learn that he had set up an explosives workshop in his house. When I began to recall the dates of my visits, I realized that each time, within about a week afterward, there was some kind of explosion.

At times, Pintér did not just help make cases disappear — he also personally organized killings. In 1995, for example, he had a conflict with the businessman József Prisztás, who was involved in real estate. At the time, Prisztás was one of the richest people in Hungary. Pintér had his eye on one of Prisztás’s buildings, but Prisztás was a very tough and independent man — he never worked with the police, handled all his problems himself, and feared no one. He refused to sell the building, and very tense negotiations began.

Prisztás invited Igor Korol along with a couple of his men for protection. I was there as a translator. This took place in the Fifth District, at the Korona Hotel. On Pintér’s side was his close associate Tamás Portik, who, together with Pintér, had been involved in the diesel scheme and later handled all the dirty work for him. Portik also came with several of his men, and the conversation was extremely tense. Everyone left the table dissatisfied. Portik said there would be serious consequences: “Shoni Bácsi will be very unhappy with your refusal.”

About two weeks later, Prisztás was getting into his car — he had an expensive jeep and traveled without security — and as soon as he opened the door and put one foot inside, a cyclist riding past fired a silenced pistol and shot him in the head. Later, the court established that the perpetrator was József Roháč, a Slovak citizen who worked as Portik’s hitman.

Another victim of Pintér’s was József Boros. He had been an associate of Pintér, Portik, and Mogilevich in the diesel business and knew everything about everyone. In 1998, he gave a video statement in which he laid everything out — with names, events, and dates. At the end, he said that there was one more person, the main participant in all these events, whose name he would not yet reveal. It was clear to everyone that he meant Pintér, the head of the police.

Boros was promised that the recording would not be made public, but within a few days it had spread across Budapest — I had it myself. What followed was the same pattern: Pintér gave the order to Portik, and Portik tasked Roháč. Roháč planted a bomb in an old abandoned Fiat that had long been standing in the city center, not far from Boros’s office. Boros always walked to work along the same route, and when he passed the Fiat, Roháč, who was waiting nearby in the bushes, pressed the button.

The explosion was horrific. Nothing remained of Boros. His lawyer was also killed, along with two passersby, and dozens of people were injured. It was in the very center of the city. The surrounding buildings looked as if they had been bombed from the air.

As I already said, the bundles of money were usually small, but in 1997 much larger sums began to appear: $300,000, half a million, and once Mogilevich handed over a large leather sports bag containing one million dollars. All these large sums were intended for “Vitya” — that is what Mogilevich called Orbán. Orbán and Pintér were already close at that time, and this was no secret to anyone. Still, neither of them ever appeared at Mogilevich’s office — at least, I never saw them there.

In 1998, parliamentary elections were scheduled, and Seva was, of course, counting on Orbán’s rise to power to give him complete freedom of action. At first, it seemed that everything was going according to his plan. In 1998, when Orbán won, he immediately made Pintér minister of the interior.

Seva treated Hungarians in general with open contempt, and politicians in particular. Orbán was no exception. Seva could easily say something like, “That stinking Magyar lives off my money, he’ll do what I say, or I’ll f*ck him up.” I do not know all the details of their relationship — only what was discussed in my presence during meetings between Igor Korol and Mogilevich. Igor was generally very laconic, whereas Seva liked to talk.

When Orbán was running as an opposition figure, all those bombings and killings that outraged society helped boost his ratings. But once he came to power, his former associates and sponsors became an obstacle, and with the help of that same Pintér, he quickly got rid of them, putting them all behind bars. Mogilevich himself was also forced to leave Hungary. As far as I know, he moved to Russia.

Could the Russian authorities have made use of the compromising material that Mogilevich has on Orbán? I do not have reliable information about that, but I think they certainly could.

In 1998, I fell out with Igor Korol. It all started when my childhood friend, Sasha Kirichanin — the same one I had started the vodka business with — called me and, in a trembling voice, asked me to come to him immediately. He named a small town outside Budapest.

I found him badly beaten, with broken ribs. His car, his watch, and his money had been taken, and he had been told to come up with another $100,000, with threats to slaughter his entire family if he didn’t.

Of course, after that I immediately went to Igor Korol and confronted him. I said: “We have a relationship based on trust. You act as if we are friends. I looked after your wife at the maternity hospital. I have always helped you. And you allow this to happen to my friend? He replied in a cynical tone: “That’s how I decided.”

Then I offered him my own car, which was better and more expensive than the one they had stolen, so that he could take mine and return Kirichanin’s. Igor refused and even acted as if my offer offended him.

I knew which one of Igor’s men had taken the car, and I knew where he lived. I went there, dragged him out of the car, got behind the wheel myself, and returned it to Kirichanin.

A few hours later I got a call — not from Igor himself, but from his men. They demanded a meeting. We met, and they said: “Since you think you’re such a hero, then hand over your own car as well.” That’s when I snapped. I said: “You should have taken it when I offered it. Now you will get nothing.”

After that Igor started calling me, threatening me. I told him: “Stop pushing me, because don’t forget that I know a lot. If you keep pushing, you and Pintér will end up in prison.”

I understood that this would have consequences, but I thought the worst they would do was smash my car. Instead, on December 23, two men got into my car. One looped a garrote around my neck, and the other began stabbing me with a knife. At first I resisted, but then it became clear that I would not get out of the car alive, so I pretended to faint. I heard one of them say to the other in Russian something like, “The job is done,” and they left.

“One looped a garrote around my neck, and the other began stabbing me with a knife. It became clear that I wouldn’t get out of the car alive, so I pretended to faint”

They had hit an artery, and the blood was flowing out. With my last strength, I made it to my apartment on the fifth floor. The stairs were flooded with my blood. Once I got inside, I began to lose consciousness. Later I was told it was a miracle that I survived, because I had lost 3.5 liters of blood. For an ordinary person, that would have been fatal, but because I was a bodybuilder, weighing about 120 kilograms, and had a lot of substances in my system — steroids and so on — that saved me.

In the end, I not only survived but recovered, and within a year I was already competing again. I completely shifted to sports: preparing others for competitions, selling sports nutrition products, and earning a decent living. Oddly enough, Korol and his men stopped bothering me.

Then, in 2001, Igor Korol pushed out another close associate of his — Igor Radchenko — and Radchenko asked me to take him into my business. I said I would agree on the condition that he tell me how everything had happened, and he told me everything as it was, including that Igor Korol had been the one who initiated the attempt on my life.

That completely set me off again. I started calling Korol, demanding a personal meeting, hurling the harshest insults at him. Under normal circumstances, even a fraction of that would have been enough for him to kill me, but instead he tried to calm me down, asked me to drop the matter, even changed his phone numbers. Then one of his associates asked me to stop, because our phones were being monitored, and if we actually met, the police would simply swoop in on us. In the end, Korol was prevented from reentering Hungary when he tried to return from abroad. And it was the same for everyone who was involved in organized crime: some were expelled from the country, others were imprisoned.

Eventually it was my turn as well. At the behest of Sándor Pintér, I was sentenced to seven years in prison on a fabricated charge. I was accused of kidnapping, even though there were witnesses who testified in court that I had kidnapped no one. While I was in prison, investigators came to see me and wanted me to tell them everything. I explained to them: “You understand that Sándor Pintér is essentially your superior. If you think you can act on any information I give you, then you are very naive.”

However, when the government in Hungary changes, I will absolutely testify in court. I very much want to look Sándor Pintér in the eyes.