'I couldn't say I was a tourist' – one of the Hungarians detained in Bosnia on suspicion of espionage

"We weren't spying, we were conducting a secret private investigation," 73-year-old György Baráth told Telex. The man, who has been working as a private investigator for decades, was detained along with a colleague last week by police in Bosnia and Herzegovina on suspicion of espionage, according to Bosnian media reports. Telex also reported on the news, as well as the fact that György Baráth and his partner were not taken into custody and were allowed to leave the country freely.

Five days after the events, I met György Baráth, the head of the private investigation agency Baráth és Partnerei at their downtown office. He told me that he had founded the private investigation agency in 1999, when this line of work was still relatively new.

He comes from the world of secret services

Many Hungarian private investigators have a background in law enforcement or the secret services, and Baráth belongs to the latter group. Before the change of regime, he worked for the military secret service, then for the counterintelligence, and after the change of regime, he worked for the Information Office, i.e., intelligence. All he revealed about this period of his life was that as an intelligence officer, he was mostly abroad, not in an office, but in the field.

Baráth left the secret service in the mid-1990s. In the private sector, he first worked as a security consultant and then, from the late 1990s, as a private investigator. Since leaving the intelligence service, he has had no connection with the state agency, he said, when I asked him about it. For ten years – until last year – he also served as president of the Hungarian Detective Association.

He said that 90 percent of his private investigation agency's clients are foreigners, and many of the requests are for business and economic purposes. But he mentioned as an example that they have a relatively large number of assignments where they have to check the background of an employee applying for a particular job. They receive assignments not only in the Balkans, but all over the world, including the United States. "I've been almost everywhere, except for Mexico" he said, emphasizing that confidentiality is extremely important in private investigation work.

It was obvious that they were foreigners

"The identity of the client is a secret. The nature of the assignment is a secret. The result of our work and what the client will do with it is also a secret," he said, indicating that he would not even tell Telex who had commissioned him to go to Bosnia. All he revealed about the Bosnian job was that as part of a private investigation for business purposes, they had to observe a subject – secretly, of course. He also said that private investigators cannot break the law or commit crimes in the course of their work, that they too carry out their work in accordance with the law, and that the work in Bosnia was no exception.

He and his colleague, had accommodation in the town of Tuzla, located at the foot of the Majevica Mountain in northeastern Bosnia, on the banks of the Jala River. They arrived in the country on October 20. They worked in the small town of Banovići in the Tuzla Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which could be described as a rather urban village.

"There are no tourist attractions, no tourists. This wasn't great for our work because it was obvious that we were foreigners, strangers," he explained. During their work in Banovići, they were careful not to get too close to their target. But they still attracted the attention of a person who, according to Baráth, was probably cooperating with the police. He believes that it was this person who reported them to local police.

The photos taken at the scene were quickly deleted

"I was just taking something out of the car when my partner called to say that the police were checking his ID. I went over and saw three police officers standing around my colleague. They asked us what we were doing in town. After thinking for a moment, I decided I couldn't say we were tourists, because there aren't really any tourists in Banovići... so I said we were private investigators," Baráth recounted.

He said that at that point the police officers politely asked if they could see what was in their car. "Of course, I showed them. There was a video camera, a camera, and two hidden video cameras in the car. I quickly pocketed one of them, but the other was hidden in a cap, which I showed to the police officers. We still had enough time to quickly delete the photos we had taken on our phones at the scene," he recalled of the circumstances of the identity check. All this happened on October 22.

After checking their IDs, the police asked them to accompany them to the local police station. There, they were questioned, but Baráth did not reveal the name of his client or the target. Instead, he said he came up with a cover story about what a private investigator was doing in Banovići. "Obviously, I couldn't reveal the client or who the target was. I said we were looking for a man named István Kovács, about whom we only had a description. We had to observe him. They asked for my phone, but luckily the photos had already been deleted by then," said the private investigator. István Kovács was obviously just a fictional character.

They were asked whether they were spying for the Hungarian or Russian secret services

"We knew they had no proof against us, so we didn't ask for consular protection," said Baráth, who believes that one important factor in the story is that there are no private investigators in Bosnia. There is no law in Bosnia regulating the activities of private investigators, so the police did not understand exactly what this work involved.

After their questioning, they were allowed to leave the police station that same day, but without their documents and on the condition that they report to the immigration authorities the next day, October 23. "We left the police station and went to a restaurant for dinner," he said, refuting reports in the Bosnian press that they had been detained for even a minute.

The next day, other than police officers, members of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian secret service, the Information Security Agency (OSA) also showed up at the immigration office in Tuzla. "They asked us whether we were spying for the Hungarian or the Russian secret service." Baráth recalled the interrogation. He said that he Bosnian counterintelligence agents were not harsh with them at all, and the interrogation was conducted in a normal tone.

"They said they knew that I had previously worked for the Hungarian secret services. Of course, it wasn't difficult for them to find this out, as my detailed biography is available on the website of my private investigation agency, and everything is public. I told them the same thing I told the police in Banovići: we are conducting a secret investigation as part of a private investigation. Of course, I repeated the cover story about a certain István Kovács, and I added some extra details. I told them that while they were questioning me here, the target, that certain Kovács, could have already had the meeting we were supposed to be observing him for, but we missed it, so our client won't pay us," said the private investigator.

According to Baráth, the interrogation at the immigration office lasted from 9 a.m. to around 3 p.m. on Wednesday, but it became clear during that time that the Bosnians had found nothing about them that could be used to suspect them. However, according to Baráth, the Bosnians "were persistent in trying."

At one point during the interrogation, they were told to return to the immigration office at 5 p.m. or the next morning to sign some documents. Baráth chose the former, and they went to a nearby café to have a coffee and a soft drink.

According to the private investigator, this is when they got their first surprise. "A Bosnian journalist called and asked if we were the Hungarians who had been arrested on suspicion of espionage and who had secretly photographed a Bosnian military facility. I told him that this was nonsense, that nothing like that had happened," Baráth recounted the phone call. He denied to Telex that they had photographed any military objects, adding that to his knowledge, there were no military objects in Banovići. "Shortly afterwards, another Bosnian news website called us asking similar questions," he recalled of the time they spent in the coffee shop.

“Extremely interesting targets” for Bosnian security services

After returning to the immigration office, they were told that they had to leave Bosnia within 15 days. “Finally, they asked us which border crossing we would be leaving the country at. I told them it would be the same one where we entered," said Baráth, who was surprised that the whole story later became a "spy affair" in the Bosnian, Serbian, and Hungarian press. He reiterated to us as well that they were really just private investigators and that the Bosnians did not even suspect them of espionage.

The Bosnian newspaper Raport was the first to report on the arrest of Baráth and his companion. The paper wrote that the Bosnian secret service, the OSA, had become involved in the case on October 20, immediately after they entered the country. According to the newspaper, the OSA identified them on the basis of operational information, as they were "extremely interesting targets" for the security services. According to the Bosnian newspaper, the OSA started tracking them early on and monitored their every move.

Raport recalled that the Hungarians claimed they had come to Bosnia to document a meeting of certain individuals in the Banovići area – allegedly foreigners – but according to the newspaper, this claim “could not be substantiated with credible evidence.” Raport claimed that the Bosnians believed that Baráth and his companions were actually intelligence agents, which is why they decided to deport them. At the same time, they were also banned from entering Bosnia and Herzegovina for one year.

Baráth confirmed to Telex that they had been deported (according to the decision, they had to leave the country within 15 days), but he believed that the OSA had not been tracking them from the moment they had entered the country, because if they had, the Bosnians would have known who the Hungarians' "real" target was. "Our work as private investigators was not exposed, and the Bosnians were unable to identify either our client or our target," he said with a hint of pride in his voice. He also denied that they had been commissioned by the Russians for the job in Bosnia.

A military facility nearby?

Telex was only partially able to verify the version presented by Baráth. There are no official military facilties in or around the Bosnian town where they were operating. The fact that this story nevertheless spread in the Bosnian press may be due to the fact that there used to be coal mines around Banovići, and back in the day Tito liked to use such mountainous, rugged areas of the former Yugoslavia to hide military facilities. All we were able to find evidence for is that, according to an old Al Jazeera Balkan travel guide, there is a military facility on one of the hiking trails near Banovići that should be avoided. Additionally, according to the official website of the Ministry of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 2015, the then Minister of Defence visited the town of Kladanj, 45 kilometres from Banovići, and the "military facility on Konjuh Mountain."

The Bosnian press reports claiming that “Hungarian spies” had been detained were also untrue – in fact, there were no accusations brought against the Hungarians. However, since Baráth could not reveal the identity of his client and the photos taken on their cell phones were deleted so that the Bosnian authorities could not learn the truth, we were unable to verify the accuracy of his story.

The fact that the Bosnians deported them and banned them from entering the country for a year could mean two things. On the one hand, it could mean that the Bosnians believed they were spies, but were unable to prove it. But it could also mean that the Bosnians did not want it all to look like a failure on their part, so they had to take some sort of action against them.

Given the relationship between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Hungary, as well as the espionage activities and political-diplomatic games taking place in the region, it is not surprising that the two Hungarians caught the Bosnians' attention and were found suspicious. The fact that a Hungarian private investigator in Bosnia is asked by local counterintelligence agents whether he works for the Russians reveals how Hungary, which maintains close political ties with Serbia and is considered pro-Russian (like Serbia), is perceived in the region. The Bosnians' suspicion is understandable even if Baráth and his colleagues were only working as private investigators there, because in the world of secret services, it is not at all uncommon for intelligence agents to pose as private investigators to cover up their real activities.

Bosnian-Hungarian relations have been quite turbulent this year, which may have played a role in how the Bosnian authorities treated György Baráth and his colleague. On February 24 this year, 70 Hungarian officers of the Counter Terrorism Centre entered Bosnia and Herzegovina for training and exercises, according to the official explanation. The officers' visit caused a diplomatic storm, as they went to Bosnia just as Viktor Orbán's pro-Russian ally, Milorad Dodik, was being convicted in the first instance. It was because of this timing that VSquare assumed that the TEK officers may have gone there to get Dodik out of the country. However, a more realistic version is that the Hungarian Prime Minister simply wanted to use the operation to demonstrate his support for the Bosnian Serb politician.

Then, in March, statements made by Levente Magyar, Hungary's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in Banja Luka caused serious diplomatic tension between Hungary and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Hungarian politician openly supported the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik, and sharply criticized the Balkan policy of Western powers, which was interpreted in Sarajevo as interference in their internal affairs. This led to Hungarian Ambassador Krisztián Pósa being summoned by the country's Foreign Ministry.