{"id":9717,"date":"2019-03-24T19:55:15","date_gmt":"2019-03-24T18:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=5390"},"modified":"2019-03-24T19:55:15","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T18:55:15","slug":"kemeket-kerestunk-orosz-fegyverkereskedokre-es-egy-diplomaciai-botranyra-bukkantunk-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/kemeket-kerestunk-orosz-fegyverkereskedokre-es-egy-diplomaciai-botranyra-bukkantunk-2\/","title":{"rendered":"K\u00e9meket kerest\u00fcnk, orosz fegyverkeresked\u0151kre \u00e9s egy diplom\u00e1ciai konfliktusra bukkantunk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/ket-orosz-fegyverkereskedot-csaltak-torbe-magyarorszagon-amerikai-ugynokok-de-az-orban-kormany-moszkvanak-adta-oket\/\">In November last year, we published a story<\/a> about two Russian arms dealers who were arrested in Hungary as the result of a US-led sting operation. Later, the Hungarian government extradited the two Russians to Moscow, infuriating the Americans. The whole case was kept secret until we exposed it. Szabolcs Panyi tells the story of his reporting:<\/em><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: left;\">From tips to court documents<\/h3>\n<p>This was by far my favorite story of 2018, and probably the story that I am most proud of from my entire career yet as a journalist. Not just because of the article\u2019s international relevance and the impact it had, but primarily because of how detailed, readable and thrilling the final text was edited to become \u2013 credit goes out to the editor, Gergo Saling for that.<\/p>\n<p>According to my exprience, you always find the best stories by coincidence. This was also the case with the saga of Vladimir Lyubishin and his son and how I found out about it. Originally, I started investigating a completely different story, Russian intelligence activity, in the summer of 2018. One of my Hungarian sources well-informed on defense matters told me that two Russians had been arrested by Hungarian authorities in recent years, but it was kept secret. The source did not know further details, just that it had happened before the Skripal poisoning and the diplomatic expulsions that followed.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest enemies of all journalists are their own prejudices and assumptions, hence I was convinced for a long time that those Russians were military intelligence officers. Moreover, I did not even take one of my other sources\u2019 claims seriously when this source \u2013 who follows the Hungarian defense industry closely \u2013 told me something contradicting. The source said that the Russians were arms dealers, not spies, and the operation to bust them was led by U.S. authorities, not Hungarians.<\/p>\n<div class=\"arve-wrapper arve-normal-wrapper arve-youtube-wrapper \">\n<div class=\"arve-embed-container\"><iframe class=\"arve-inner\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1qox4yC7EXU?iv_load_policy=3&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;wmode=transparent&amp;autoplay=0\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"felhivas\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/fektess-be-a-demokraciaba-2019\/\">Support Direkt36, invest in democracy!<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I tried to gather more information for long weeks, but without any success. Then a third source finally gave me a name. Things started to speed up, thanks to the online US court database (PACER) where I managed to find a court case that looked more than thrilling even at first glance. Most of the documents associated with this court case were sealed, however, I could download a very important one. A DEA special agent testified before a federal judge and described the details of a complicated DEA investigation involving surveillance, captured message exchanges and photos of weapons. Then it took a long time for me to process all the court documents.<\/p>\n<p>In these documents, however, people, countries and cities were referred to by codenames only. Luckily, I knew from older news pieces that the Russian arms dealers had ties to a Hungarian company, hence it was obvious that most parts of the DEA operation took place in Hungary. We looked up company registries and gathered every available information on the two Russians, then contacted a former Hungarian business partner. The information he gave us proved that most of the retracted locations in court documents are referring to Hungary indeed. The former business partner also told us how counter-terror units raided the company\u2019s warehouse.<\/p>\n<h3>A pacifist arms dealer<\/h3>\n<p>I needed to understand why the Lyubishins were doing business from Budapest, and how it was possible that they were open to negotiate with alleged members of a Mexican drug cartel. I had multiple meetings with active or retired arms dealers for on background conversations. They were constantly quoting a 2005 Nicholas Cage movie named Lord of War while trying to explain the context. The movie\u2019s protagonist, Yuri Orlov, is a fictional Ukrainian-American arms dealer. After the fall of the Soviet Union, with the help of corrupt army officers, Orlov smuggled weapons from Ukraine and other Warsaw Pact countries and sold them to dictators, warlords and drug cartels. Third world countries knew these Soviet-made weapons very well as they are cheap, reliable and rarely break down \u2013 in case they do, the Soviet weapons are easy to repair or replace anyway.<\/p>\n<p>The Lyubishins were trading on the so-called secondary arms market, where used weapons change hands, and on the tertiary market, meaning the trade of weapons parts and equipment officially defunct. Many of my sources called this \u201ethe typical grey zone,\u201d where trading arms is formally not illegal, but where the official end users of weapons are not always the same as where these weapons actually end up. (In order to trade weapons legally, one needs to name the real end user and certify the purchase through certain state authorities.)<\/p>\n<p>I have never dealt with the topic of arms trade before as a journalist, and I really enjoyed discovering a new world. I was surprised to learn how ordinary people Hungarian arms dealers seem to be and what they think about themselves and their profession. One of them, for example, started explaining to me once that he is actually a \u201epacifist,\u201d or that he is not willing to trade hand grenades because he finds them \u201edisgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, I tried to contact the Russians\u2019 associate, Hamit Nasirlioglu, a Turkish national who was also apprehended by the DEA \u2013 but he is still in a New York prison. When I searched the internet for his name, I found Serbian language articles. This is how I discovered the name of the covert DEA operation, Perseus, for example. U.S. authorities are obsessed with giving fancy names to their operations. Perseus is a famous hero in Greek mythology, who went on a mission to cut the head of Medusa, a mythical creature. Perseus was helped by gods who gave him magical weapons, like a shield and a helmet that made him invisible. Since Medusa, one of the Gorgon monsters, turned people to stone with her gaze instantly, Perseus had to approach her by only looking at Medusa\u2019s reflection in his shield. Once Perseus managed to cut her head, he used the magic helmet to escape the Gorgons\u2019 cave. According to U.S. court documents, the DEA\u2019s Perseus operation was equipped with a modernized version of these gadgets: U.S. investigators were using secret surveillance and confidential sources to cut down the head of an arms trade network.<\/p>\n<h3>Phone call to a prison<\/h3>\n<p>I obtained phone numbers to the Russians who were locked up in their cells in Moscow for quite a time. I called a Moscow number and a young man\u2019s voice answered. After introducing myself in English as a journalist, however, he hung up on me immediately. Then I sent text messages and the Russians\u2019 Hungarian lawyer called me back. He was open to answer my questions. The Russian voice who picked up the phone likely belonged to Lyubishin Jr. He is guarded less strictly than his father, and just like in Hungary, prisoners in Russia are usually able to hide cell phones.<\/p>\n<p>The Lyubishins\u2019 lawyer, Robert Fridman, helped me to understand, among other things, what kind of diplomatic and legal battle took place in Hungary between the U.S. and Russia as both countries tried to enforce their extradition requests for the Russian arms dealers. The U.S. administration was shocked that Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government decided to help Moscow, but I knew this already. However, the matter was so sensitive from a diplomatic perspective that most of my sources directly involved in the Russians\u2019 case from both governments stayed silent. There was a source who must have known everything, or at least this is what I suspected from the longs silences while we talked, but this source was only willing to walk me through the extradition process in general. Another source, initially helpful and friendly, became very serious as soon as I mentioned the name Lyubishin, and redirected me to the press office.<\/p>\n<p>It is not a coincidence my sources were so cautious as the story of the Russian arms dealers, revealed by Direkt36, is a well-documented example of how Hungary\u2019s government tries to maintain a close relationship with the Kremlin \u2013 even at the cost of hurting a NATO ally\u2019s national security interests. It is natural that Hungarians wanted to keep everything in secret, but U.S. diplomacy did not want to go public with this story either as the State Department\u2019s new policy is to avoid any criticism of the Orb\u00e1n government.<\/p>\n<p>I only received \u201eno comment\u201d answers from State Department, the DEA, DOJ, the U.S. Embassy in Budapest and the Southern district of New York attorney\u2019s office to my original inquiry. After publication, however, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert issued a statement. She used sentences we haven\u2019t seen for a long time, like \u201ethe United States is disappointed in the Hungarian government\u2019s decision to extradite the Lyubishins to Russia\u201d, or that \u201ethis decision is not consistent with our law enforcement partnership, undercuts the work that our agencies had done together to build this case, and will make citizens in the United States, Hungary, and the world less safe.\u201d The article has won the Quality Journalism Award in November 2018, awarded for the best articles in Hungarian journalism each month.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/tobb-sebbol-verzett-az-oroszok-kiadatasi-kerelme-amivel-elhappoltak-az-usa-elol-a-magyarorszagon-elfogott-fegyverkereskedoket\/\">Here is the follow-up to the story.<\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/tamogass-minket\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">We can only do this work if we have supporters.<br \/>\nBecome a supporting member now!<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How we did our investigation into a story about two Russian arms dealers who were arrested in Hungary as the result of a US-led sting operation, and about how the Hungarian government extradited the two Russians to Moscow, infuriating the Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[104,198,262],"ppma_author":[549],"class_list":["post-9717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nyomozasok-hattertortenetei","tag-fegyverkereskedelem","tag-ljubisin","tag-oroszorszag","author-cap-szabolcs"],"authors":[{"term_id":549,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-szabolcs","display_name":"Szabolcs","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9717"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}