Hundreds of illegal weapons were released into the world from Rajka, which was the center of Slovakian arms dealers

The Mosonmagyaróvár District Prosecutor’s Office will soon bring charges against the Slovak arms dealers who were arrested in the biggest arms and ammunition seizure case in Hungary in the last 25 years. The group converted defused weapons that could be legally purchased in Slovakia due to previous lax laws. Several of these have been identified, but most of them may still appear in violent crimes around the world. According to the police, together with the international authorities, there is a good chance of finding them.

Two years ago, 59 weapons were found in Rajka

In July 2022, the National Investigation Agency seized 59 weapons, more than 45,000 rounds of ammunition and several kilograms of explosives in Rajká, near the Hungarian-Slovak border.

As police major Máté Csupor, head of the International Crime Department of the National Investigation Agency, said on Tuesday: a revolver-type firearm and 9 pieces of ammunition were found in the driver’s car, for which the person did not have a permit. After that, house searches were carried out for 30 hours in family houses connected to it, and as a result, the largest domestic seizure of firearms, ammunition and explosives in the last 25 years took place.

The various weapons were found in the house of Dusan S. and his wife in Rajka, it is suspected that he was the head of the arms dealer criminal gang. Of the weapons found in the warehouse linked to the couple, 40 had Slovakian permits, but these were not considered valid here. An additional 18 modified firearms were found and a revolver rifle stolen in Germany was also seized.

Some of the seized weapons had undergone illegal conversion in Slovakia earlier, and the weapons were originally purchased by Stromans who only gave their names to the business in exchange for a minimal consideration. They were named in the documentation, but they were no longer the real owners of the weapons.

This was used in the Paris terrorist attack

Regarding the background of the case, the major said that tens of thousands of former military firearms had been deactivated and purchased by multi-companies in Slovakia, and thanks to the Slovak weapons law, which was considered relaxed until the 2020s, anyone could buy them. However, they were easily converted into lethal weapons, and as it turned out, illegally converted Slovak firearms were also used in the 2015 terrorist attack in Paris. Due to European pressure, the laws have become stricter.

Under the auspices of Eurojust, the leaders of the Mosonmagyaróvár District Prosecutor’s Office and the Slovak Special Prosecutor’s Office, which supervised the case, set up a Slovak-Hungarian investigative team under the auspices of Eurojust in January 2023 at the Hungarian initiative to clarify when and how the seized firearms were acquired and whether a criminal organization was connected to the seized firearms warehouse – said Péter Takács county prosecutor general. As a result of the joint investigation, in April 2023, the authorities in the Tatras in Slovakia – the KR NNI together with the Slovak NAKA and with the involvement of EUROPOL – again liquidated an arms warehouse.

The four-person Slovakian gang traded more than half a thousand weapons for three years – between 2014 and 2016 – and registered more than 600 weapons to their name. One member of the team was serving his final prison term in Slovakia in another case, three of his companions were raided on April 19, 2023 in a coordinated international operation. At that time, they attacked three locations in Slovakia at the same time: Nagyszombat, Nyitrabány and Rózsahegy.

The detectives searched the apartment of the three men and then questioned them. It turned out: one of them originally lived in a two-story building on Rózsahegy that functioned as a lathe workshop, part of which he converted into a residence. Together with his companions, the man could store the ineffective weapons they had bought here, and then transform them into live firearms. In the workshop, the investigators found 14 weapons, approx. 2,000 ammunition of different calibers, a total of nearly 70 magazines for pistols and assault rifles, grenades and self-made silencers were seized.

The investigation is closed, but the weapons are still being sought

The chief prosecutor said: then, in September 2023, NAKA and the National Investigation Agency conducted a search in Slovakia and Rajka. During the operation in Bratislava, for example, 10,000 rounds of ammunition and numerous licensed firearms were found at the residence of a man who was interviewed as a witness, while weapons kept without a license were found in Rajka.

They all said, the investigation is closed and the police will soon hand over the investigative documents to the prosecutor’s office. Charges may soon be brought against three Slovak citizens in Hungary, and the proceedings against four people in Slovakia will be concluded. As a result of the joint work, an organized criminal circle was mapped, the main profile of which is the illegal arms trade.

According to Major Máté Cupor, although the procedure has been concluded, the work must be continued, because the firearms that have not yet been identified can be found anywhere in the world, and in the war situation in Ukraine, the fight against the illegal arms trade is in the common interest of Ukraine’s neighbors.

So far, the serial numbers of 600 weapons have been collected and sent to analysts during the research, which also crossed the borders of Europe. Among other things, they managed to locate two in Sweden, where they were used in a robbery in 2016. Guns were also seized in Spain, and three guns were found during a violent crime in Pretoria, South Africa. To Telex’s question, the head of the department added: so far they have been able to identify approximately 100 firearms through documentation or seizure, so the majority of at least 600 firearms are still out there, but “hopefully we will be able to track down the rest and the circle of perpetrators will expand.”