Lawyer for Tamás Gyárfás requests retrial in Fenyő case
The convicted businessman's attorney has asked the court to review a final judgment on the basis of new evidence, arguing that someone else may have been behind the murder plot.
Lawyer for Tamás Gyárfás requests retrial in Fenyő case
In a petition submitted to the Budapest Court of Appeal, Dr. Adrienn Laczó is requesting a review of the judgment that became final in April 2025 and imposed a seven-year prison sentence on her client. According to the lawyer, the court previously based its decision on evidence that can now be challenged by testimonies from new witnesses.
The defence's position is that the true perpetrator was not Gyárfás but another influential businessman. The lawyer explicitly named Gábor Princz, former chief executive officer of Postabank, as a potential instigator. The banker is now deceased, so criminal proceedings cannot be pursued against him, but the defence argues that the court should nonetheless have investigated the indications pointing to him.
At the earlier hearing, the judge rejected consideration of evidence relating to Princz, stating that he does not feature in the indictment. According to Laczó, rejecting such evidence in a thirty-year-old case built exclusively on circumstantial evidence would be a serious error.
The defence has also pointed to another problem affecting the original proceedings. Gyárfás and his wife identified the person who delivered the audio recordings used for extortion as someone named K. Imrich, whom they recognised from photographs and in person. Nevertheless, the court never called him as a witness, but instead accepted the testimony of a "witness number 4" in his place.
According to Laczó, this person contradicted himself on numerous points, and moreover, he escaped with a suspended sentence for an offence for which his associate received fourteen years. This clearly provided an incentive for him to cooperate with the authorities—even with false statements.
The retrial proceedings may stretch out over many months. The prosecution will first give its view, then the Budapest Municipal Court will forward the case file to the Regional Prosecutor's Office. There is also the possibility of ordering a retrial investigation, during which new witnesses could be heard. Finally, a fresh panel of the Budapest Court of Appeal will decide: they will not weigh the truth of the evidence itself, but rather whether the new claims are genuinely new, and whether they are capable of substantively changing or overturning the previous decision.
The defence has also requested that execution of the sentence be suspended for the duration of the retrial proceedings. "Every day counts double for him," the lawyer stressed, referring to the elderly man's age.
Source: Index
Source: Index