When documentation gets declassified

Some documents were declassified by the Hungarian Office of National Security (Hungarian secret service) pertaing to olajszőkítés (literally oil bleaching). I will try to give some background. The story begins right after the socialist regime collapsed in 1989. Heating oil was subsidized by the state -- but it was the very same product as diesel fuel. By 1994, one litre of diesel fuel costed 76 forints while one litre of heating oil merely costed 32 forints (to compare, at this time the USD/HUF exchange rate is close to 100, so replace forint with cents). Organized crime of course jumped on this fantastic opportunity. Noone knows whether the government was simply dumb or it was actively supporting organized crime, The subsidization stopped in 1995, by which time every major political party got involved. Beginning 1992 april 1st, the heating oil was colored but this coloring agent was removable by the infusion of sulfuric acid. The acidic fuel eventually killed the engines, several car manufacturers wanted to stop honoring warranty in Hungary because of this. Shell simply left the country. Another indicator of the magnitude of this operation was that in 1995 May, a mere few thousand litres of the newly unsubsidized heating oil was sold in the country -- one year ago, they were selling nearly a million litres of it monthly. Infrastructure was readily available -- extremely rundown barracks abandoned by the Soviet army, the ancient machinery of former forced farmers cooperations (also bankrupted, abandoned)...

Past 1995 May, the money acquired this way was reinvested in oil products again -- several inferior quality oil produce had a much lower custom rate, so you can imagine what transpired. This was the time when the customs office got corrupted beyond imagination... Again, the quantity was astonishing -- in 1996 it took only one night for the mafia to steal back fifteen million litres (!) of seized oil. Also, it was allowed to pay customs and taxes some time after importing the wares. When that time arrived, the importer company simply disappeared, the owner was typically a homeless guy....

Between 1990-2000 crimes related to fuel caused approximately 500 billion HUF in damages to the state. To compare, in 2000, the national debt was 8000 billion HUF, approximately 55% of the GDP.

See http://www.nbh.hu/212-6-00383-1993.pdf for the documentation. You do not need to know Hungarian: everything is crossed out...