Contabilitatea secretă a societăţii Lupeni şi recalcularea producţiei de cărbune (1925-1930)
The Secret Bookeeping of the Lupeni Society and the Recalculation of the Coal Production (1925-1930)

Summary/Abstract: The Lupeni Coal Company was set up in 1925, when the Urikány-Zsilvőlgyi Hungarian Coal Company, headquartered in Budapest, sold on credit 50% of its shares to a Romanian banking consortium led by Banca Românească. The secret accountancy of the Lupeni Company has been preserved until now and it offers plenty of data to establish that the total turnover and the amount of sales are exceeding at a very high rate the official figures. The data prove that there are great differences between the internal financial ratio and the published one. For example, the benefits published by the official accountancy amount to 550.315.050 lei between 1925 and 1930, but the secret computation reveals a total gain of 1.309.779.377 lei, i.e. 2.38 times more. Similarly, in 1930 the official depreciation fund reached the level of 257.892.185 lei, but the internal bookkeeping totalized 587.783.160 lei accumulated depreciation, that is 2.28 times more. Of course, this difference indicates a similar level of investment activity. The recorded investments amounted only to 242.662.100 lei between 1925 and 1930, but together with the unlisted investments the total amount reached 486.963.970 lei, which is two times more. By publishing considerably diminished figures of the official accountancy, the board of the Lupeni Company had a precise goal, which was to hide the real coal output in order to pay smaller taxes for the sales. That is why the company reported average sales of 530.220 metric tons per year, with an average value of 566 million lei. In contrast to that, our results reveal average sales of 1.464.624 m. tones and a value of 1.564 million lei per year, which is 2.76 times more. By tampering with accounts, by dwindling with the paid taxes, the company obtained a gross profit of 50%, and a clear profit of 30% for the annual rate of turnover. Even so, during the severe crisis of the 1930s, the Lupeni Company merged to the Petroşani Coal Company in 1931, building up a single large company in the Jiul Valley, the largest on the Romanian coal market.

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