DRAMAS IN GOLD

Evening Star, Issue 23189, 11 February 1939, Page 12

DRAMAS IN GOLD

You may read in history of the robber barons of British and Continental Europe who lived in luxury on their depredations. The 40 thieves of Arabian Nights fame aro known to ail of us. John Dillinger, the mankiller; Charles Peace; every other bandit bent on gain. Throw them all together and the result is not a circumstance, in any kind of crime short of child murder, to Ivar Kreuger, tho Swede who turned from honest match producer to the all-time prince of crooks. Kreuger started making his fortune in the immediate post-war days. The match industries of the world had been crippled. Factories had been converted into munition plants. Many went under through lack of funds. The “ wax vesta ” and the Swedish safety were about the only ignitible bits for ignition that the world had. The Swedish manufacturer started to “ corner ” tho match industry, ll.s timber he got from Russia, his native Sweden, Norway, and Canada. Ho organised tho Kreuger and Toll Co. to put up factories tho world over. He bought up practically all the available supplies of phosphorus and sulphur. By 1929 there was practically one match firm in the world and that was Kreuger and Toll. Kreuger started mixing into other industries. Wherever ho went ho had the Midas touch, and whatever enterprise he entered prospered—for a time. Then he developed extravagances that make the world's greatest spenders mere pikers. Solomon they say had a harem of 1,000 women. Kreuger had harems in such frequency that ho never got to know half tho ladies he dated for future events. But they got in their little work anyhow. His hills at the largo European dressmakers and jewellers were said to reach .‘J5,000,000d0l in one year. Impossible? Well, just gown and bejewel fashionably three would-be- “ best dressers ” every day and find out for yourself.

By Paul Neumann

No. 2—IVAR KREUGER THE BILLIONAIRE TURNED BAN DIT,

In any event, the depression came along and Kreuger found his debts were getting a bit too much. His bondholders were clamoring for something to show for some 50,000,000dol investments. His shareholders wanted to know all about 200,000,000d0l more. He showed them. Out of a miracle cache in Stockholm he produced 20,000,OOOdol in Italian Government securities. They were forgeries, but his bond and stockholders did not discover the fact for two years. He produced the most amazing set of investments in first-class corporations the financial world ever saw. But not one of them was anything but a piece of paper, cleverly done by his own private engravers. Ho went on with his sybaritic exister.ee—a woman in every city; a foot light queen in every theatre; gambling ids anywhere and everywhere. And through this, Kreuger, like so many chance-takers, was only waiting for prosperity to come back. Optimists bad told him it was just around the corner, and, as we all know, it stayed there. In the year 1932, the Swedish, French, and British Governments began to get curious. They wanted to know whether some of their humble subjects weren’t being milked to provide the funds Mr Kreuger spent, Kreuger laughed. He laughed at New York Stock Exchange demands for accountings for certain vanished real securh ties, and the substitution therefor of useless things. Mr Kreuger went to Paris for a conference. There ho killed himself and loft the most tangled mass of business wreckage ever known. More than 100 suicides followed. Governments refused to believe he was dead, and followed, up every clue, until France finally announced its own surgeons had “ post mortemed ” the remains. Kreuger's failure was not as great in money as was Samuel lusull's, but in loss of lives and in the misery it created it has no parallel. (Copyright.)