Hitkrant, 1977: ABBA: trading music for oil

ABBA has finally found a solution to the problem of turning the huge sums of money that are being made in Eastern European countries into hard cash. Up until now this wasn't possible, because it isn't allowed to import Eastern European money to Sweden.

To that purpose, ABBA has set up a company, together with a Swedish trading company called Beijerinvest. That company, Sannes Trading, is going to transfer the income from record sales in Eastern European countries into assets from these countries. Then these assets are going to be sold in Western European countries for a lot of money. And where these assets are concerned, they are mainly thinking about oil.

With this set-up, the limitations on import of records that these Eastern European countries are utilizing can be by-passed as well.
"In Poland, only 800.000 records from the West were allowed to be imported last year. That quantity was completely confiscated by ABBA. And to think that we could have sold millions of records over there," according to ABBA manager Stig Anderson.
Except for Poland, ABBA is also very popular in Czecho-Slovakia and East Germany. The shortage on ABBA records over there is such, that there's an enormous black market in ABBA albums.

Stig expects that this project is going to enable a larger distribution of ABBA records in Eastern European countries and on top of that an increase of trading activities for their business partner Beijerinvest. It is expected that this new project is going to make about 25 million Dutch guilders per year. Ka-ching!