Commissions and Bribes – the Secret Weapons in the Foreign Trade of the Peoples’ Republic of Bulgaria

Corruption has attracted the attention of researchers and experts as an obstacle to growth and a burden on public finances. Where the concerned mind sees a threat to good governance, the clever swindler finds an opportunity for profit. The managers of foreign trade in socialist Bulgaria are no exception. Behind the slogans of solidarity with Third World countries, state-owned enterprises that operate openly or covertly abroad deploy a wide network of corrupt dependencies to secure their interests through the generous distribution of "bribes" and "commissions", two concepts that easily transform into each other. We find abundant documentary evidence of such practices in the court archive of the comprehensive case against the executives of the state-owned commercial enterprise "Texim". The trial itself shows the contagious example of bribery, which from being a means of influence in foreign countries has settled into the organizational culture of the Bulgarian company, opening the door to various forms of abuse of office.