They may have found the body of Imre Katzenbach, a former MTK footballer who had been missing for 11 years, MTI learned on Friday.
The announcement, published on the police website on Friday, didn’t name the victim, all that was stated was that it was found in Budapest, XVII. The then 45-year-old man disappeared from his district home on September 28, 2009, and his earthly remains were found on October 23 in the Baranyajenő area.
The statement wrote that the police suspected from the beginning that it wasn’t just about disappearance, the man couldn’t stay in an unknown place of his own volition, but had been the victim of a crime.
As a result of persistent patrolling work and comprehensive data collection, in 2019, information came into the possession of the police that the man became a victim of homicide, they wrote.
The investigation revealed where the body was hidden, so investigators found it in the Baranyajenő area and identified the victim’s remains on the ground.
Attila H., a 50-year-old Hungarian citizen currently in the penitentiary, was interrogated as a suspect by the staff of the Life Protection Department of the National Investigation Bureau of the Standby Police on suspected murder. The investigation is underway in every detail, they wrote.
At the end of March 2010, hvg.hu wrote about the mysterious disappearance of Imre Katzenbach, a former MTK footballer circled in the Eclipse case, leaving the man’s Mercedes and personal documents behind a few days after his birthday. The athlete was born on September 20, 1964, and was 45 years old when he disappeared, according to the police statement.
The Eclipse case erupted in mid-March 2010 after the then Customs and Finance Guard reported at a press conference that the case had been investigated. It was also stated at the prospectus that the name of Imre Katzenbach, 45, with typhus, had appeared in connection with one of the companies about two months earlier, ie about three months after his disappearance. According to the customs officers, he can be reasonably suspected of active participation in a criminal offense, as he has about half a billion forints in his bank account.
Criminal proceedings in the Eclipse case began in March 2012 at the Metropolitan Court. According to the accusation, Eclipse Zrt., Founded in 2003, won significant IT orders in 2004 in connection with the authentication of cars, biometric passports and other projects.
In order to reduce the amount of VAT payable on their sales of tens of billions, the company’s managers formally involved subcontractors after 2006 with the help of fictitious contracts, certificates of performance, invoices, to whom these amounts were soon passed on and taken in cash. Thus, Eclipse didn’t pay more than one billion forints in taxes. Imre Katzenbach was mentioned several times in the indictment as the managing director of one of the subcontracting companies as a person in an unknown location.
MTI knows that Attila H., who was interrogated by the police as a suspect in the homicide, was a defendant in the Eclipse case and is currently serving his final sentence in the case at the penitentiary.
(MTI)