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Based on the recently disclosed archive materials, the article documents the evolution of a network of Yugoslav-controlled companies in Zone A of the Free Territory of Trieste in the period from 1945 to 1951. It provides information on companies’ business performance, their ownership and governance structures, links with Yugoslav and Slovenian institutions and state-owned enterprises, and examples of illegal commercial and financial operations. The focus is on the yet unknown role of the Slovenian State Security Service (UDV) in these companies. To put it in a wider context, the article provides an account of political decisions and organisational measures taken in Slovenia and Yugoslavia during 1950 and 1951 that put companies in Zone A firmly and formally under the control of the UDV and made them a part of a larger clandestine network operating in Italy, Austria, Germany and Switzerland, connected through an off-shore financial company established by UDV in Liechtenstein in 1951. These developments concluded the process of institutionalisation of a parallel economy operated by UDV, which had started already in 1948 with the takeover of SAF.
