Former swimming association head Gyárfás denies involvement in Fenyő murder

During his interrogation by authorities on Tuesday, Tamás Gyárfás, the former head of the Hungarian Swimming Association, denied having hired Tamás Portik, the one-time head of an oil company involved in illicit deals in the nineties, to assassinate Hungarian media mogul János Fenyő in 1998, Gyárfás’s attorney has said.

On Tuesday, the National Investigation Bureau (NNI) took Gyárfás in for questioning in connection with the Fenyő murder case on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder.

According to the website of János Bánáti, Gyárfás’s attorney, the NNI suspects Gyárfás of having hired Portik — identified in the statement only as P. T. for legal reasons — to have Fenyő murdered. The bureau believes Portik had accepted the job and hired Slovak criminal Jozef Rohac (identified as J. R.) to carry out the murder.

The statement said Gyárfás has filed a complaint over the NNI naming him as a suspect in the case and “denied the charges in the strongest terms”. During the interrogation, which Bánáti said had lasted hours,

Gyárfás described in detail his dispute with Fenyő and how they had “made up”, as well as his relationship with Portik.

Gyárfás was reportedly “stunned” to have been named as a suspect in the case, since in a past criminal procedure over his having been blackmailed, he had made himself available to investigators and told authorities everything he knew about the Fenyő case. The statement said Gyárfás had provided investigators with “comprehensive and logical answers” in his testimony concerning the blackmailing case.