Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
‘THE HUNGARIAN MAFIA’ - A Cold War Hungaricum
FABULOUS SPY GAMES purchase price if certain conditions were met. In this case, western firms may have slipped backhanders to the re-exporting company or its representative. Regarding the goods delivered from the Bloc to the West, the American report reveals some intriguing data.238 The Americans had little information on the exact extent of the profits or losses the Hungarian economy made from re-exporting, but they claim to have reasonably precise figures on the goods delivered from socialist countries to the free world in 1957. Most of the time, the country of origin of the East-West transfer was China. Such resale transactions produced hard currency revenues totalling 28 million forints in 1957, but only 26.1 million forints was paid to the seller for the goods, 11.5 million forints were spent on transportation and 700,000 forints disappeared as other costs, so a loss of 10.3 million forints was generated’ through the transactions. Even the CIA is reluctant to draw general conclusions from this single data set, but it did find that Hungarians reckoned the loss was worth it just to obtain hard currency. The report also notes that the notion of profit can be very different depending on perspective. It may have been more important for Hungarian foreign traders to acquire markets in the long run than the actual financial profit from a given business deal. For example, the Hungarians also undertook obligations to deliver raw materials that were unobtainable in the country or industrial goods that could not be produced, at least not in the quantities required. On these occasions, Hungary was given the opportunity to obtain hard currency by trading goods that were not manufactured in the country and was thus able to obtain commercial quotas for the delivery of such goods. The American intelligence services clearly attempted to provide a logical explanation of the phenomenon, and did find relevant answers to the questions raised, but the reality was probably laced with slightly more profane elements. From the subsequent years, we have plenty of data to suggest that straightforward corruption lay behind the deals that made major losses for the 238 CIA, FOIA, Economic Intelligence Report - The Role of Re-exports in Hungarian Foreign Trade. June 1959 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79R01141A001400100002-2.pdf (Downloaded on: 28 August 2019) 86
