BOGUS MATCH MONOPOLY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 91, 18 April 1932, Page 7

BOGUS MATCH MONOPOLY

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, 16th April. . A message from Stockholm states that the police have arrested Lange, Huldt, and Holm, three directors of the late Ivar Kreuger's companies, and charged them with falsification of a balance-sheet and profit and loss account in connection with the Kreuger affair. It is revealed that since 1928 Kreuger and Toll issued share debentures exceeding £50,000,000, the Swedish Match Company nearly £.25,000,000, and the International Match Corporation over £20,000,000. It is now stated definitely that Kreuger forged Italian Treasury bonds to the extent of £16,000,000. It has not been discovered what use he made of them. • According to the indictment, Lange, Huldt, and Holm were merely dummy directors performing jUce automatons Kreuger's behests in concerns founded solely and fraudulently for the transfer of funds. FICTITIOUS ASSETS. Other accusations m an amazing series of alleged frauds include a bogus .bank, fictitious assets, a secret safe, and forged documents. Lange was director of the Garanta Company, of Holland, based mainly on an allegedly fictitious contract giving the company the retail sale of matches in Poland. It is also alleged that a bogus match monopoly with Spain in return for a loan of 180 million pesetas was found in Kreuger's room. It is alleged that Huldt, at Kreuger's orders, founded the Dutch Bank for Scandinavian Trade in Amsterdam, which never did business and only kept fictitious books. Assets amounting to millions appeared in. the balance-sheet among the fictitious assets of Kreuger and Toll, of which firm Holm was a director. There were allegedly thirty-five millions' of Dutch florins- in the Danzig International Bank -which. Kreuger started in 1931. COUNTERFEITING- BONDS. Eegarding the forgery of Italian State bonds, the discovery-was made that the Kreuger-Toll documents were printed in Stockholm at an establishment to which Kreuger personally delivered the necessary copper plates, emphasising the imperativeness of secrecy. The plates were found in Kreuger's secret safe. It is believed that Kreuger intended to use the forged bonds to balance the 1931 accounts as to which he issued instructions before his suicide. Experts have established, that 42 bonds, each of half a million sterling, printed in English, were forgeries. A COOL SWINDLER. One newspaper declares Kreuger as a cool swindler and gambler. He began his frauds in 1916, when he falsely announced that a big issue of new shares had been, oversubscribed. A member of the expert committee' investigating the frauds' says that the last trace of Kreuger's romantic halo, has disappeared. . : . . .'l-.V" A Borne message says that it is semi-' officially announced that the Kreuger bonds were gross, brazen forgeries. The. Government had refused to have any business relations with Kreuger. The "Daily Telegraph" says it is ex. pected that the Swedish income tax will be increased at least 20 per cent, owing to the Government's losses; on the Kreuger taxes. v I- '