A friend of mine sharply rebuked me the other day for not writing enough on my blog.  While I can assure you all I haven’t exactly been napping in the recliner, I will do my best to start picking up the slack while still juggling my legal workload (which lately consists several sharp knives, a hot potato, a bowling ball, and a nuclear warhead – let’s hope I don’t drop anything).  To begin with, why not revisit one of my favorite subjects:  the murky machinations of Gazprom-related business in Hungary, where the goulash state corporatism and Russia’s most cheerful barracks live on despite the ravages of the economic crisis.  Although much of this story is background for the initiated, there is some wild news about Emfesz uncovered by Roman Kupchinsky that merits discussion.

The last few times I have checked in on this story, we’ve seen the Austrian company OMV backstab the Hungarians (with Russian help) in an attempt to take over MOL, South Stream vs. Nabucco continued to roil Hungarian politics (while Russo-skeptic Viktor Orban’s party Fidesz made big advances in the EP elections), and lastly the tricksters behind the much maligned RosUkrEnergo trading company dissolved this shadowy group only to replace it with another proxy, known as RosGas.