The parliamentary enquiry into the Hungarian oil scandals by Gusztбv Kosztolбnyi. Throughout the 1990s, Hungary’s “oil mafia” dominated energy imports and distribution, siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars from the public purse as they evaded state taxes. And, strangely, everyone knew about it for years. Indeed, it was not just bent policemen and corrupt politicians who helped the mafia in their grand scam; the general public was complicit in this illegal and socially destructive trade. Many Hungarians were all too happy to fill up their cars with fuel they knew was cheaper than it should be. “We all conspired against ourselves,” concludes the author in a chilling comparison to the “soft dictatorship” of the late Communist era in Hungary. Greasing the Wheels is the first book in English to examine these critical events and the 2000 parliamentary enquiry into their details. At last, the scandal that shook the very foundations of the nascent democracy in Hungary is clearly and critically explained for an international audience. This book includes the first English translation of the lively yet disturbing testimony of Zsolt Nуgrбdi, the enquiry’s star witness, the man who shocked the nation by daring to say in public what the entire country had been keeping secret for a decade.