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
'THE HUNGARIAN MAFIA' to individual licensing, so Hungarian trading firms were unable to trade on the other side of the Iron Curtain in significant numbers. The ice was broken, however, in 1972, when the Ministry of Finance issued Decree 28/1972, which made it possible for foreign trade companies owned by the Hungarian state and holding monopolies to establish subsidiaries in western countries, and even with foreign capital participation. According to former Hungarian ambassador to Bonn, István Horváth, Hungary was not the first country to allow the establishment of joint ventures in capitalist countries. Romania adopted a rule to this end as early as 1971,245 but traders did not take advantage of this opportunity as freely as their Hungarian counterparts did. It was not joint ventures established in the West that were typical in Romania, but companies founded domestically with foreign capital allowed into the country that were more popular as joint ventures. According to the American analysts, however, Romania never succeeded in making the country attractive to western investors, mainly due to its cumbersome bureaucracy and tangled legislation. Instead, the operation of companies was made even more difficult by the fact that the planned economy did not take into account the raw material requirements of joint ventures that constantly needed imports, which made production slower and more expensive. In addition, western owners were obligated to pay a portion of employees’ wages in hard currency (the western hard currency paid under this title was obviously not intended to make life easier for factory workers but to relieve the states hunger for hard currency), and also faced major difficulties due to regular disruptions to the energy supply.246 (Unlike in Hungary, it was probably not the economic-financial elite in Romania, but the secret services, that controlled the establishment and management of these companies so they were probably used in different ways and for different purposes.) 245 Horváth - Németh 1999, p. 146 246 CIA, FOIA, International Economic & Energy Weekly, 31 October 1986 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP97-00770R000100630001-3.pdf (Downloaded on: 31 August 2019) Previous research seems to confirm that Hungary was a frontrunner in the Bloc in terms of establishing joint ventures and cooperation arrangements 91
