A former Sydney swimwear model is at the centre of renewed attempts to locate millions of dollars sent out of the Philippines by former dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Evelin Hegyesi, who modelled mink bikinis in the 1970s and once graced the pages of Playboy magazine, is now a 57-year-old eastern suburbs multimillionaire with a waterfront Point Piper mansion and several investment companies. She also has a Eurasian daughter, Analisa, now living with Dean Fleming, son of the wealthy racing and fruit markets family worth $270 million.
The Sun-Herald has uncovered documents that show that some of Ms Hegyesi’s Australian companies have financial links with secret Marcos accounts
kept in Switzerland. The documents were found after Swiss Authorities
lifted the country’s strict bank secrecy laws. Thus, investigators had access to secret bank records of Marcos, who died in exile in Hawaii 1989.
Buried deep in a maze of documents is a reference to a mysterious Sydney link. The documents show that, in 1971, soon after Ms Hegyesi had a baby daughter, then president Marcos signed papers that made Ms Hegyesi’s company, Austraphil Pty Ltd, the “sole and only beneficiary” of one of his secret accounts.
Land title papers and annual reports show Austraphil had a loan of $250,000 (about $2 million in today’s money) from a Swiss firm called Finanz AG of Zurich. Finanz AG was a subsidiary of the Swiss SKA Bank, now called Credit Suisse. This was the main bank used by Marcos as the front for his Swiss secret accounts.
The former model lived for more than 30 years on the ritziest peninsula in Sydney. She made millions from property deals but managed to keep a low profile among the eastern suburbs social set. She made many trips back to southern Germany, where she was born. She had come to Australia in the late 1940s when she was just two years old with her Hungarian-born parents, Theresa and Anton.
It is not clear how she came to be connected with Marcos in 1970. But something happened that prompted the president to assign one of his secret Swiss bank accounts to her new company, Austraphil.
While her mother eschewed parties, daughter Analisa is described by social writers as “exotic”, “vivacious” and “flamboyant”, with a super-curvy body.
She and her partner bought a $4.5 million four-bedroom waterfront mansion on the end of Darling Point and last year they had a baby girl, Tahni. Ms Hegyesi was not at her apartment last week and did not return messages and letters forwarded by friends and colleagues. (Source: The Sun Herald)