Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
ATTACK ON THE OMFB - The Siemens lobby
FABULOUS SPY GAMES foreigners for discounts, thus discouraging them from cooperation to begin with, and are also wasting time with negotiations, making deliveries by the set deadline uncertain,”455 and eventually ordered the Siemens computers through Transelektro. The previously mentioned instruction issued by the Ministry of Foreign Trade, which authorised Transelektros purchases and gave the OMFB the opportunity to make purchases without competition, permanently removed the obstacles to the deal. In the end, the deal was struck by Sebestyén and a Siemens manager of Hungarian origin named Pál Dax, guaranteeing a discount of 15 percent. The OMFB did not change its aggressive tactics later either, and “seized every opportunity to prevent Metrimpex from making deals with Siemens under better terms than those enjoyed by Transelektro, because every percentage point of difference proved the shortcomings of the OMFBTranselektro contract.”456 455 Ibid. p. 183 456 Ibid. p. 185 457 ÁBTL 3.1.9 V-160121/2, p. 185 Confession by Endre Simon, 28 September 1973 Pál Dax went to school in Budapest, was awarded a doctorate in law and began his professional career at the Siemens office sometime in the 1930s.457 Here, he worked together with Mihály Farkas, who promoted Siemens’ interests in Hungary as Transelektros general manager, and cooperated with the OMFB to circumvent foreign trade laws. In 1944, Dax was transferred to Austria and stayed there working at Siemens’ local companies. According to information from state security, he played a strategic role during the negotiations between the company and the Allied Control Commission, for which he was later held in high esteem. Using his local knowledge, Pál Dax expanded the company’s interests in Hungary after the war. For Siemens, Hungary presented a marvellous opportunity to find customers for computer products that were still uncompetitive in western markets; it wasn’t until the second half of the 1960s that the German company started to manufacture its own computers developed in house. These lagged way behind US technology, and were inferior even to British and French models, delivering worse performance at much higher prices than their 164
