[ad_1]
On December 19, 1925, the Hungarian Telegraph Office reported that three Hungarian citizens had been arrested in The Hague after seizing counterfeit thousand-franc bills worth ten million francs. But the incident did not occur on December 19, but on December 14. In fact, one of the biggest scandals of the Horthy era, the almost tragicomic case of forgery of Frank, caused a worldwide sensation in French newspapers, while the Hungarian government he was struggling to cover up the case. According to the most well-known explanation, the counterfeiters simply wanted revenge in France for the unjust peace dictatorship of Trianon.
Photo: Journal of Numismatics, 2003-2004 (grades 102-103) / Arcanum
Granddaughter of Windischgrätz
The details of Franco’s forgery case, due in part to the destruction and encryption of documents and inconsistencies in confessions, have so far not been satisfactorily clarified. However, there is no doubt that the organization was led by Prince Louis Windischgrätz, a former local government minister. Part of the prince’s property was transferred to Czechoslovakia after the Trianon Treaty, which was confiscated by the Czechoslovak government without compensation.
The former Minister of Local Government, who was the grandson of Alfred Windischgrätz, who commanded the Austrian imperial troops against Hungary in 1848-49,
At the Sárospatak estate, he attempted to produce counterfeit thousands of francs through a lithographic process.
Windischgrätz sought the help of a German expert, Arthur Schultze, due to the poor quality of the fakes. Upon the arrival of Prince Schultze, he moved his stage to Budapest, where after the ascension of Major László Gerő, the forgery continued in the basement of the Retek Street building of the Institute of Cartography. The institute, which operated under the Trianon Treaty and had military purposes, was under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Defense.
Photo: Editorial Gesta, Budapest, 1997, page 171.
Betraying the hilt of the sword
The counterfeiting team acquired the team from Germany. Despite all his efforts, copying the watermark and obtaining special paper used for the bank caused an insurmountable problem, but the falsification of figures and inscriptions was not perfect either. The paper in particular caught up with them because in the original there were fibers that could only be imported from the French colonies. Thus, in the end, the paper used became rougher to the touch, thicker and at the same time lighter than the original. The watermark was attempted by pressing. In the end, 30,000 fakes of “bleu et rose” thousands of francs were manufactured, of which, according to experts, 4,400 were of good quality, 9,000 of medium quality and 16,000 of poor quality. According to the historian Balázs Ablonczy
the inscriptions are discontinuous, the paper is rougher, the letter “F” in the word “Franc” is blurred instead of a soft pastel, and the letters of the value mark were 1 to 3 millimeters thicker. The shading was rough, some letters were longer, and there were also differences in the woman’s left arm on the right side of the banknote resting on a sword hilt, the original showing only a thumb in front of the sword hilt, while the forgery shows every woman’s finger. “
The forgers calculated that the money would be sent by diplomatic mail to the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Italy, where the banknotes would be converted into other currencies.
Money in stockings
But they fell before launching their action. What happened was that Aristid Jankovich, a retired Hussar colonel, tried to exchange two thousand fake francs in Amsterdam, probably by mistake, but failed. The bank official considered the banknotes suspicious, asked for patience and, in the meantime, notified the authorities.
Upon arrival the police arrested the man, who was about to hide another 1,000 francs in his stockings at the time of the raid. At the time of the crime, the suspect began waving the Foreign Ministry courier ID and tried to withdraw from the process, citing his diplomatic status.
Jankovich’s task would have been to deliver suitcases full of counterfeit banks to two trustees, György Marsovszky and György Mankovich. Thus, he and two of his companions who were waiting in The Hague were also arrested.
The scandal reached the highest level of Hungarian politics, as the Dutch police found the colonel’s notebook in Jankovich’s hotel room, in addition to the suitcase full of fake money, which revealed that Imre Nádosy was the chief of police. national. “I was fully aware of the action”.
However, the involvement of Prime Minister István Bethlen is still unclear. Created by the National Assembly on January 21, 1926,
In the parliamentary debate on the report of the commission to investigate the forgery, the opposition harshly attacked Bethlen.
The French counterfeiting was claimed to have been going on for years with the knowledge of the government and with some degree of cooperation. The accusations were immediately rejected by the Prime Minister or demanded to be proven.
Judgment in The Hague
The French and Hungarian police also joined the investigation, and one after another the agents who were distributing the fake francs fell. In December, Dezső Rába, the secretary of Prince Lajos Windischgrätz, was arrested, and then, in January 1926, the prince himself, who was a Jankovich officer in the army. But behind bars was the national police chief Imre Nádosy, who issued a courier card for Jankovich, Arthur Schultze and several employees of the Institute of Cartography.
Photo: Country-World, July-December 1981 (Volume 25, No. 26-52) 1981-07-22 / No. 29 / Arcanum
On March 18, 1926, the court in The Hague sentenced Arisztid Jankovich to three years in prison and two years to his companions, György Marsovszky and György Mankovich, to two years in prison. In her issue of April 4, 1926, Est reported the verdict as follows:
So it was a general surprise that the court did not impose the maximum penalty (seven years in prison) on the defendants, as everyone in legal circles was convinced, only the convicts were surprised by the conviction because they trusted the Dutch court not only mitigators. they will find out, but they will also take the reasons invoked as sufficient grounds for dismissal.
Symbolic damages
Light penalties were also imposed a few months later on the Hungarian lawsuit, which also developed with unprecedented speed. On May 7, 1926, the Criminal Council of the Royal Criminal Court of Budapest, chaired by Géza Törkey, initiated criminal proceedings against Lajos Windischgrätz and his colleagues. Throughout the process for falsifying money and public documents, the defendants defended themselves by committing not a crime but a patriotic act. Major László Gerő stated:
When we, with the naive, credulous, law-abiding and skilled workers of the Institute of Cartography, multiplied the thousand francs by four, we thought how good it would be to also quadruple the territory of this country. And when we wrung the paper out of that water, the waters and rivers of the beautiful Carpathians appeared before our eyes.
Prince Windischgrätz did not feel guilty for two reasons:
First of all, what they are accused of is not an individual and selfish crime, it is a motive for the Hungarians’ struggle, which has a very broad background. Second, I have many good reasons why we cannot be accused at all of what they are accused of. I do not wish to comment on this in the present main proceedings.
The prosecutor Gusztáv Strache, representing the prosecution, emphasized in his speech:
Because patriotism is the noblest sentiment of patriotism. Only noble actions can arise from this noble feeling. I doubt that counterfeiting can be a noble act. Patriotism and counterfeiting are mutually exclusive concepts. Counterfeit money as a patriotic act, desecrate patriotism, remove patriotism from the corners. Only what can be done for the salvation and benefit of the homeland should be done for the homeland. So, consider it well before doing anything for your home country.
The first instance verdict was delivered on May 26. Lajos Windischgräetz and Imre Nádosy were sentenced to four and four years each, while László Gerő was sentenced to two years in prison, of which four months and fourteen days were with preventive detention. The other defendants were sentenced to six months to two years in prison and fined, and some were acquitted.
Photo: Country-World, January-June 1973 (volume 17, numbers 1-26) 1973-05-02 / number 18 / Arcanum
After imposing remarkably lenient sentences, the victim Banque de France, fearing the fall of the István Bethlen government, symbolically claimed a single franc in exchange for his claim for damages.
Retired testimonial
The appeal hearing began on August 16, 1926 before the royal court under the direction of István Gadó, president of the council. The investigation mainly focused on who was the head of the whole forgery case, as no one admitted it, only Imre Nádosy pleaded guilty among the defendants. As one of the most important moments of the trial, Dezső Rába withdrew his confession that Pál Teleki was the contact between the government and the counterfeiters, and
thus withdrawing the government from the case as a possible instigator.
On August 24, the royal panel upheld the sentences of Windischgrätz and Nádosy, but reduced the rest. The Mansion, led by second president Zsigmond Ráth, upheld the second instance verdict against Windischgrätz on October 14 to the point of imprisonment instead of four years in prison, taking into account four years and six months in prison.
Epilogue
But none of the convicts served their sentence. Windischgrätz was released after two years, but he also spent this time in sanitariums. Nádosy received the governor’s pardon in the spring of 1928 and was paid a pension until his death in 1935. Gerő was released, at least according to the May 27, 1926 issue of Pesti Hírlap, after the verdict was announced.
The international public, on the other hand, was severely punished: in the Western European cabaret, the Hungarian who paid good money by mistake was at the forefront for a long time.
[ad_2]
