Swedish entrepreneur and international financier called the “Swedish Match King,” an international swindler on a grand scale. By 1924, he controlled 70% of the world’s match production in a time when cigarette, cigar and pipe smoking were at an all time high around the world. A tycoon with enormous wealth, Kreuger hid from the international spotlight, shunning photographers and interviewers. Heavily borrowing from banks, Kreuger lost his reputation in the stock market crash of 1929. After his untimely death, the Swedish government suffered a freefall on the international money markets.
Kreuger was a businessman who started early in the match making industry. He made an attempt to try out his business acumen in property development but by 1913, returned to the match industry. He tried different underhanded schemes and unscrupulous methods to earn a larger profit such as raising the price on matches even though production costs remain cheap and reducing the number of matches in the box without consumer detection.
In 1916, Kreuger owned seven factories and bought rival firms in Sweden and in Europe. He established the mighty Swedish Match Trust. Taking advantage of the business climate during WWI, he used dishonest and unscrupulous methods to control the match industry. Kreuger turned to Swedish, French and American banks to finance his monopoly in the match industry. In 1925, he told bankers that he had advanced $12 million to the Spanish government with a guarantee of earning 16% a year interest on the loan. The gentleman’s words were all the bankers needed to give him his enormous loans without examining the fictional papers that were allegedly endorsed by the Spanish Prime Minister on behalf of King Alfonso. Again in 1925, Kreuger told bankers in America and France that the Polish government borrowed from his estate with the same fictitious arrangements as Spain. A gentleman’s word was his honor at that time in history, so bankers loaned him money without seeing the bogus forged and worthless contracts. After the October 1929 Wall Street stock market crash, the banks demanded to see the Match King’s assets. In 1931, Kreuger tried to enlist the help of financier J. P. Morgan to make good on his loans and was turned down. After meeting with New York bankers in 1932, Kreuger returned to Paris to plead with his French creditors.
On 3/11/1932, Kreuger purchased a nine millimeter revolver and a hundred cartridges from a gun store nearby his Parisian apartment. On 3/12/1932, he shot himself in the heart as he lay on his silken sheeted bed in Paris. Upon his death, emergency meetings were made around the world. The Swedish parliament met the following day to stabilize the throne but the time that the Paris, London, and NY Exchange opened on Monday morning. The government learned of kreuger’s dishonesty and corruption bilking the country and personal investors more than $200 million in his bogus stock. By forging Italian bonds, Kreuger went down in financial history as the most colossal swindler of the 20th century.
Unattractive in appearance, Kreuger never married but had a stable of paid mistresses and prostitutes to attend to his every whim. His chief mistress, Ingaborg Hassler pestered Kreuger to marry her for over six years. After his death, she published her memoirs on their life together. If he had an affair with married women, he would pay hush money to their husbands. At 40, he owned a magnificent palace in Stockholm which consisted of 125 rooms with massive marble columns, and finely wrought iron entry gates. In his private office, he kept a bank of telephones. One would be triggered to ring whenever he pressed a button on the floor with his foot so he could carry imaginative conversations with world leaders in front of impressed visitors.
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Link to Wikipedia biography