The former head of the Hungarian Swimming Federation, businessman Tamas Gyarfas, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday for ordering the assassination of a rival entrepreneur in 1998.
The 74-year-old defendant was found guilty of “incitement to premeditated murder” by the Budapest Regional Court, which delivered its verdict under tight security.
The man who was also vice-president of the International Swimming Federation (Fina) between 2013 and 2017 claimed during the debates last year to have “nothing to do” with this affair which “ruined his life”.
The facts date back to February 11, 1998: Janos Fenyo, a competing media mogul, was shot dead with a burst of automatic weapons while stopped at a red light in the center of Budapest.
The shooter, a Slovak, was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 and it was only six years later that Gyarfas was arrested and placed under strict judicial supervision in this case which shocked the central European country .
According to the prosecution, “a business dispute, a power struggle and, as a result, an intense personal conflict” had developed between the two men.
All-powerful boss of the Hungarian federation (MUSZ) for 23 years, Gyarfas had commissioned a first hitman in September 1997, who had defected. He therefore hired a second, Tamas Portik, who ultimately organized the crime, prosecutors say in the indictment.
The latter, already imprisoned for other crimes, received a life sentence with a possibility of parole in 20 years.
Appointed head of MUSZ in 1993, Tamas Gyarfas, a former sports journalist, was forced to resign in November 2016, after being notably questioned by Olympic champion Katinka Hosszu for his authoritarian management style, poor training conditions and non-payment of bonuses.
