The recent History of Games 2024 conference brought up an overwhelming wealth of information, including on Brazil. There were three distinct talks focused on the region.
1) Excavating the present: Reflections on researching the recent history of an ever-changing tropical context (André Pase, Roberto Tietzmann, Letícia Dallegrave)
2) Cross-pollinating game development cultures: The case of Tectoy Digital in Brazil (Bruno de Paula)
3) Chains of relations for building new games history narratives: A case study of the operations of Taito Corp. in Brazil (Letícia Perani, Melanie Swalwell)
Having attended the latter two, we're planning an overview article, but first we wanted to talk about that time Abraham Kogan, head of Taito Brazil, and son of Taito founder Michael Kogan, was nearly kidnapped – by his own employees! (If anyone wants to option this crazy story for a Netflix serial, we're available to assist with the writing.)
Taito is, of course, famous for Space Invaders, but did you know it was founded in the 1950s by Odessa-born businessman Michael Kogan? The full history of Taito is even more convoluted and bizarre than the attempted kidnapping (just know that it involved Communism and wigs), and beyond the scope of this article. Michael Kogan died in 1984 while on a business trip; his son Abraham "Abba" Kogan, who was living in Brazil, became Taito's chairman.
Dr Perani's talk detailed the history of Taito's Brazilian subsidiary. It was founded either in 1968 or 1972; there's some doubt, given discrepancies in various records. It started as a distributor of amusement machines but expanded into original creations. There are even claims in the press of exporting to Japan, though this is disputed. The talk emphasised that with Brazilian games history, there's a challenge of separating anecdotes and the memories of enthusiasts from hard facts. Even official records will have anomalies. We'll examine the full talk later, but it ended with your author asking: "Is Abba Kogan still alive? If so, why don't we just interview him?"
To which Dr Perani replied: "I don't think Abraham will be willing to talk about his experiences at Taito Brazil, especially because he left Brazil in 1985 after nearly being kidnapped. Some former Taito employees tried to kidnap him, and started extortion attempts. They were investigated by the Brazilian police, and this was covered by Brazilian newspapers. It's a very murky situation..."
If you've never heard about this, it's unsurprising. We spent several hours searching online, for any mention, and while we did find several news stories of kidnappings in Brazil, nothing specifically about Abba Kogan. Occurring in 1985, long before the World Wide Web, news stories online are unlikely - and if they exist, they would be in Brazilian Portuguese.
So we turned to Dr Perani hoping for a newspaper clipping. To our amazement she came back not only with newspaper clippings, but took the time to personally translate one of the news stories into English!
The article was in newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, dated Thursday, 21 August 1986, on page 22. Written by Renato Lombardi, it was titled:
It was going to be a Cz$ 7.5 million extortion. Then the police arrived.
The Cz$ refers to Cruzados, the name of Brazil's currency in circulation between 1986 and 1989. According to Dr Perani, the stated value is now equivalent to around 11.5 million Brazilian Real, which is about £1.7 / $2.2 million. Putting aside the difficulties of converting discontinued legacy currencies and 40 years of inflation, it's safe to say it was a lot of money.
The newspaper opened with: "The extortion of Cz$ 7.5 million against industrialist Abraham Kogan, owner of Taito do Brasil and two other electronic machine companies, led yesterday afternoon to the arrest of lawyer Antônio Marcos Sartori and Hungarian Ferenc Barko. The two were arrested while receiving the money in a room on the 3rd floor of Citybank, on the corner of Ipiranga and São João avenues."
As the article details, Ferenc Barko was an auditor at Taito Brazil and threatened Kogan with leaking documents revealing "frauds committed by the industrialist." It says Barko had earlier resigned at the urging of Kogan, who was suspicious of how he handled the company's finances.
The article states:
Abraham Kogan, 37, who was born in China and has been in Brazil for 10 years, eventually decided he wouldn't pay anything. He had already been extorted three times on the same grounds, and now he would end 'once and for all with blackmail'. The other times, the amounts were much smaller (he didn't want to say how much) and he has suspected that [Barko] 'was behind it all'.
A little later the article states:
The extortion attempt came to the attention of police chief João Vetoratto, of the 1st Precinct of Robbery and Extortion of the State Department of Criminal Investigations - DEIC, and a scheme to record the phone calls was set up. Police officers Sênio and Garrido, who have been working for some years to elucidate kidnappings and extortion, advised Kogan: at the beginning, he should accept [...] and then negotiate. [...] As for the documents that would implicate Kogan in a 'scandal', Sartori said he knew nothing because they were with his client.
Ultimately Barko and Sartori were arrested at the meeting to hand over the money; Barko was carrying a loaded revolver though never used it. The piece goes on to describe some of the allegations made against Kogan, including slush funds, rigged gambling, plus bribing judges and other authorities. Kogan refutes these. It's a fascinating ordeal to read through, however it doesn't actually describe the attempted kidnapping.
"I translated - very quickly, I apologize for any mistakes - a report in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo," explains Dr Perani, adding, "It details the extortion attempt experienced by Abba Kogan in Brazil. One of the extortionists makes very heavy accusations about slush funds at Kogan's companies, among other crimes. In an interview in this same report, Kogan admitted that Taito do Brasil was not entirely correct with its finances, but he denied other crimes. The statement about the attempted kidnapping of Abba Kogan came from a podcast with Mr Pier Paolo Cartocci, Kogan's former brother-in-law, and Kogan's former lawyer in Brazil - this fact must have happened in 1985, according to Cartocci. The podcast is available at this link, only with subtitles in Portuguese, unfortunately."
The podcast's blurb states:
Exclusively, Oplayer2 brings an interview with Pier Paolo Cartocci, who was a lawyer for one of the largest arcade companies in Brazil, Taito. During Cartocci's 10 years at the company, he saved many stories and tells them all in this podcast. He knew that the owner of Taito left the country as a victim of a crime. Discover this and many other stories in this week's podcast.
We viewed the podcast using auto-generated English subtitles - it's not optimal, but the gist was just about understandable. At the start Cartocci says there are many stories which other people tell "differently to what happened", stating that he experienced events closely, being part of Abba's inner circle of family and friends.
Cartocci recounts the attempted kidnapping from the 24-minute mark. He speaks fondly of Abba, describing him as a nice guy, open hearted and kind to those he knew, and then goes on to detail how certain employees took advantage of his good nature. They robbed him and later attempted a kidnapping, all of which resulted in Abraham Kogan leaving Brazil. Today, he lives in Monaco. Cartocci emphasises his leaving was not because Abba wanted to pursue a playboy lifestyle, not because he was a "bon vivant", but because he had suffered and was unhappy with things in the region.
It's a fascinating oral history on events undocumented outside Brazil, dovetailing with the newspaper report, and ultimately is part of the global history of videogames. All of this was occurring adjacent to the successes seen by Taito Japan.
Perhaps someday, someone will have the opportunity to converse with Abraham Kogan in Monaco and document his personal recollections of all this.
It is thanks to the determined efforts of academics, such as Dr Letícia Perani, that stories like these are brought to light. If you find this interesting, please make it known that you'd like more coverage of academic research by the press.
Below is the original newspaper article, translated by Dr Letícia Perani. This is a tricky situation. Legally speaking these words, despite being nearly 40 years old, are the property of Renato Lombardi, or certainly the publisher he wrote for. The English translation, meanwhile, belongs to Dr Perani, given it's her work.
Ultimately we've decided to republish it below, uncut, in the interest of disseminating historical knowledge. The information is seemingly nowhere online in English. There are archives for O Estado de São Paulo, but accessing them is difficult, and they are obviously only in Brazilian Portguese. If anyone objects please contact Time Extension and we will remove this.
The footnotes were provided by Dr Perani for better context. They are contained within the main body of the story, in lettered brackets.
O Estado de São Paulo, Thursday, August 21, 1986, p. 22
It was going to be a Cz$ 7.5 million extortion. Then the police arrived
By Renato Lombardi
The extortion of Cz$ 7.5 million against industrialist Abraham Kogan, owner of Taito do Brasil and two other electronic machine companies, led yesterday afternoon to the arrest of lawyer Antônio Marcos Sartori and Hungarian Ferenc Barko. The two were arrested while receiving the money in a room on the 3rd floor of Citybank, on the corner of Ipiranga and São João avenues.
Since July 25, Kogan had been speaking by phone with his lawyer. In the first contact, the demand was the payment of 400,000 dollars, because otherwise, Ferenc, who had worked for Kogan's companies, would deliver to the Labor Court important documents revealing "frauds committed by the industrialist". The police were alerted and began recording the phone calls. In the last contacts, Sartori said that his client would accept Cruzados and asked for Cz$ 7.5 million, arranging for delivery at the Citybank, where he has an account.
The Hungarian Ferenc Barko, who is naturalized Brazilian, worked at Taito do Brasil from May 23 to October 3, 1984 as an auditor. He resigned at the urging of Kogan, who was suspicious of the way he had been handling the company's finances. But in February of this year, Barko applied for a job and was hired as a financial administrator. On July 16, he informed general manager Jaime de Lima that he would be away for a few days to deal with paperwork, as he intended to get married. He did not return to the company's offices, at Avenida Cardoso de Melo, 699, in Vila Olímpia, where Divertronics and Mecatronics (a), replacements for Taito do Brasil, which closed its activities last year, operate.
(a: These two companies also produced pinball machines and were bought by Taito in the early 1980s.)
Kogan sent his directors to look for Ferenc and the information they obtained was that the financial administrator had traveled to Maranhão. On the afternoon of July 25, Jaime received a phone call from lawyer Antônio Marcos Sartori informing him that Ferenc would no longer return to the company and had filed a complaint with the Labor Court against Mecatronics and Divertronics, requesting compensation of Cz$ 15,426,927.22. The lawyer also said that the amount could drop to $400,000 dolars, and, once the payment is made, the labor lawsuit would end before the first hearing. Ferenc would sign a document waiving the compensation.
But Abraham Kogan, 37, who was born in China and has been in Brazil for 10 years, eventually decided he wouldn't pay anything. He had already been extorted three times on the same grounds, and now he would end "once and for all with blackmail." The other times, the amounts were much smaller (he didn't want to say how much) and he has suspected that Ferenc "was behind it all".
The extortion attempt came to the attention of police chief João Vetoratto, of the 1st Precinct of Robbery and Extortion of the State Department of Criminal Investigations - DEIC, and a scheme to record the phone calls was set up. Police officers Sênio and Garrido, who have been working for some years to elucidate kidnappings and extortion, advised Kogan: at the beginning, he should accept the payment of the $400,000 dollars, and then negotiate. All the phone calls were made by the lawyer Antônio Carlos Sartori and he, claiming that Ferenc was out of São Paulo, said he had all the guidelines to act in his name. As for the documents that would implicate Kogan in a "scandal," Sartori said he knew nothing because they were with his client.
In one of these talks, the lawyer acknowledged that that way of acting was not legal, "but if I don't do it, other colleagues will do it and I have to make a living". After several phone calls, Sartori agreed with Kogan that the payment would be in Cruzados – Cz$ 7.5 million – and Ferenc Barko would be present on the day of delivery of the money, in exchange for the documents that the Hungarian had seized during the months he worked for Abraham Kogan. Barko didn't want to show up.
The lawyer also suggested the place for the delivery. According to him, it would not be possible to count so much money at a restaurant table, and the ideal would be in a private room on the 3rd floor of Citybank, on the corner of Ipiranga and São João avenues, where he had a bank account. The final settlement took place last Friday to give Kogan time to get the Cz$ 7.5 million. The police prepared the whole scheme. At 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon, the industrialist was supposed to be at the bank. And at the appointed time, Abraham Kogan entered the room accompanied by investigator Roberto Gelezauskas, who was carrying two bags with part of the money. The bags were placed on the table. Ferenc opened one of them to make sure he wasn't being scammed and said he would hand over the documents only after receiving everything.
(an image of Abraham Kogan, with the caption "Kogan: Stopping the extortion")
Kogan then told Gelezauskas to go get the other bags. It was the warning for the arrival of the other police officers – a police chief and three investigators. When everyone entered the room, Ferenc and Sartori put their hands on the wall and didn't react. The Hungarian had a loaded .38 caliber revolver, but at no time he tried to draw it.
At the DEIC Larceny Precinct, Ferenc declined speaking to journalists. Sartori explained that after Taito was shut down, Abraham Kogan set up three companies to replace it and has used the Taito’s accounting structure for them. He accused Kogan of making transfers "of large amounts from São Paulo to the group's companies, in Manaus (b) and in the Caribbean, in an illegal manner. One of the companies that receive money is Grand Torks."
(b: Manaus, the state capital of Amazonas (in the middle of Amazon forest) has a free economic zone, implemented in the 1970s by the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-1984). Taito installed a plant in Manaus by this time (most likely in 1976))
The lawyer made more allegations against Kogan. "He paid Ivo Noal (a Jogo do Bicho banker (c)) to travel to Rio and make agreements for the release of a report made by the Technical Police of that state, saying that video poker machines (d) allowed the gambler to win. He bought 30 syllabi for judges and the outflow of this money was posted in the companies' slush fund. There is also a list of bribes to authorities in Recife and to inspectors from this city hall to implement video poker."
(c: Jogo do Bicho (The Animal Game) is an illegal Brazilian lottery, created in the early 1900s. The "bankers" are Mafia-like mobsters who explore the game in the streets. Rio de Janeiro is a place where Jogo do Bicho is very popular, and these mobsters are seen as folk heroes, who do good deeds for the community - even with the violence and corruption that emerge from these activities. An interesting detail: most of 1980s Jogo do Bicho mobsters were former officers in Brazilian military forces and police, who acted in political repression during the Military Dictatorship.)
(d: All kinds of gambling, besides state lotteries, were forbidden in Brazil by this time. Thus, Sartori was accusing Kogan of associating with local mobsters to explore illegal gambling.)
Abraham Kogan defended himself by saying that he has nothing to do with video poker. "Our business is electronic arcade machines. I paid three times to blackmailers and decided not to pay anymore. I'm tired of being extorted and I'm going to bear the consequences. Some documents from my company are not correct and I recognize that. To this point I don't know what documents Mr. Ferenc has."
All the paperwork was seized by the police, and Ferenc and Satori were booked in the presence of a lawyer representing the São Paulo section of the Brazilian Bar Association. Both could be sentenced to four to ten years in prison. The Cr$ 7.5 million were sent to a bank in an armored car escorted by police officers from the Larceny Precinct.
Dr Letícia Perani, and Pr Melanie Swalwell contributed to this piece.