Over the past century financial swindles by the likes of BCCI, Enron, Leeson, World-Com, Maxwell, and Ivar Kreuger have been uncovered ... But hey, who's this Ivar character? Well, Kreuger is the man who Governments, the Banking Industry, Financial & Investment Institutions would prefer not to be reminded of because he managed to dupe all of them whilst committing probably the greatest swindle of the 20th century. Having said that, there were still many people who considered him to be Europe's Saviour following the Great War. Amongst these was John Maynard Keynes, the British Economist who delivered the following eulogy on the BBC Radio when his suicide was reported:

"Here was a man of perhaps the greatest constructive business intelligence of his age, a man whose far-flung activities have been in the widest sense in the public interest, who had conceived in his mission in the chaos of the post-war world to furnish a channel between the countries where resources were in surplus and those where they were desperately required .."

Keynes probably regretted this for the rest of his life, for within the 2000-odd pages of his autobiography, Kreuger's activities take up less than 2 pages. Kreuger's path to infamy originated from his plan to run a global concern, which in the process loaned a number of governments money in return for 'managing' their nationalised Match industries.

However, the Wall St. Crash, made keeping up the repayments to banks increasingly more difficult, which led him to manipulate even further the stock of the concerns he controlled. He also set up banks with falsified assets and organised the printing of Italian government bonds and notes worth $142m on which he personally forged the required signatures. Ivar Kreuger, was born in Kalmar Sweden on the 2nd of March, 1880, trained as a Structural Engineer, and goes to America. Whilst on a bridge-building project in Vera Cruz he nearly dies from Yellow Fever, then became involved in constructing the famous Flatiron Building, Metropolitan Life Tower, the Plaza and St. Regis Hotels, Archibold Stadium, Syracuse University and Hotel Carlton, the world's largest building in 1903. He becomes Vice-President of the American Consolidated Engineering Co, but then decides to return to Sweden and set up the building firm Kreuger & Toll, which introduces the Kahn reinforced concrete system into Scandinavia. Notable constructions include Stockholm City Hall, the Orsta bridge and the Swedish Olympic Stadium.

Left: The Ill-fated Vera Cruze bridge-building team. Right: One of Kreuger & Toll's
innovative building projects in Sweden during the 1920's.

In 1913 he takes an interest in the match-making business which his Father and Uncle are involved in. Independently, Kreuger founds the Kalmar Trust, Swedish Match and a further three match-making companies. The real-estate company, Hufvudstaden is also formed, to buy up property in Germany. Using his considerable wealth he then buys up a match-machinery company into which he sinks further money to develop highly sophisticated production machines which are then installed in match-making factories he owns. Due to introducing greater automation and reducing the group's running costs, he successfully manages to take over Jonkoping & Vulcan, the biggest match-making consortium at he time, by over-valuing the shares of his Trust. With 60% of the Scandinavian match industry under his control, Kreuger & Toll Inc. is formed in 1918, which as a financial holding company sells on the German real-estate he's previously bought to IMCO, (International Match Co) which he had founded in the United States on one of his visits there. This company was also set up to sell stocks and shares on Wall St. through the Investment Banking house Lee, Higginson. Some of the money raised in the US is used to purchase shares in Bryant & May and Masters in the UK, plus a majority interest or complete control of a range of mining, forestry, and real-estate interests world-wide. His family's businesses and Swedish Match are used as a mainly legitimate front for various other businesses he controlled. Kreuger did however use the stock he had in these and other companies, to raise the money needed to finance other dubious financial enterprises, which it has to be said, neither of these companies were made completely aware of, because the transactions were done through Ivar's holding company, Kreuger & Toll.

In chapters to follow, Kreuger's setting up of dummy companies in which stock-swapping, where the manipulation and falsification of their bank accounts was carried out to suit his wheeling and dealing. There is also the matter of Italian goverment Bonds that he personally forged the signatures on, and was going to, or did use to obtain funding from US Investment banks. However, if one inspects the other side of this complex man, his activities did deliver a number of positive things which included bailing out one country which otherwise would have become bankcrupt, for which he was awarded their highest medal. Much of the security which investors rely on nowadays, was implemented due to Kreuger's activities, including the International Bank of Settlements, which he personally promoted the setting up of. The loans he offered many countries for control of their monopolised match-making industries, helped goverments to overcome many of the economic problems that arose from the devastation of the Great 1914-18 war.

The amounts of money involved as of 1932 look huge even today, but truly enter the realms of stupendous when you consider that to calculate their 2001 value, these figures need to be multiplied by at least 40! Based on what really hard evidence exists, one comes up with figures that range between $27,000 million and at worst, in excess of $50,000 million! It would not be unreasonable to suggest that the combined value of Enron and World-Com's dodgy-dealings look fairly insubstantial in comparison to Kreuger's swindling ways which spanned from1918 till 1932.

Find Chapter 2 HERE.