On March 12, 1932, between nine and eleven o'clock in the morning in a luxurious Parisian apartment on Avenue Victor Emmanuel III, 5, a revolver shot rang out. One of the world's richest men, an old bachelor, "match king" Ivar Kreiger fell dead to the floor.

Press reports indicated that he had fired the fatal shot himself. The police, however, did not put Kreiger on the suicide register in Paris, as was required by instruction. There were certainly reasons for this, as well as for refusing to examine the fingerprints on the instrument of crime. The diaries and personal notes of the deceased, seized by the police, were then destroyed, so that relatives and friends could not even look at them.

Ivar Kreiger was among the biggest sharks of international financial capital. He was born on March 2, 1880 in Sweden in the family of the Russian consul, the owner of a transport company and match factories. In 1902, Kreiger successfully passed the final exam in Stockholm, specializing in civil engineering and went to the United States for five years. Returning to Sweden, Ivar, together with a partner, founded the construction firm "Kreiger and Toll", which in four years turned into a joint-stock company with a fixed capital of one million Swedish kronor.

Kreiger's real career began before the First World War, when he decided to take over the family business of making matches. In 1917, Ivar Kreiger registered the International Match Corporation in the United States, which was mainly engaged in the fact that bought up real estate ... from the company "Kreiger and Toll". Real estate was followed by forests, mines, factories, plants all over the world. The securities of the Match Corporation were in great demand among Americans.

After the war, many countries, economically exsanguinated, were on the brink of ruin. Ivar Kreiger was ready to lend to any country. Between 1925 and 1930, he made loans of 387 million dollars! Behind the low interest rate was a whole fan of services to create a privileged and monopolistic position for Kreiger's enterprises. His match empire consisted of one hundred and fifty factories in thirty countries around the world, employing over sixty thousand workers. Ivar became known as the "match king".

The Kreiger Corporation was getting closer and closer to a worldwide match monopoly, already owning at least sixty percent of the world's match production. This meant that Kreiger could now almost everywhere set their own prices for matches.

However, the source of his income was not only matches. In the late 1920s, the Kreiger Group controlled 50 percent of the world's iron ore and pulp production. He owned stakes in machine building, the electrical industry, and many other industries. He owned railroad and steamship lines, vast tracts of land around the world, and even gold mines in Bolivia.

Kreiger was very fond of Paris and kept a permanent apartment and office there. In 1927, as the franc staggered, Kreiger made a five percent loan to France for 75 million dollars, which the government used to pay off the ruinous John Morgan Jr. loan. Kreiger received the Legion of Honor. The press respectfully referred to him as the "Napoleon of the World Economy," the "Prince of the World Financial Empire."

On October 23, 1929, Ivar Kreiger offered a lucrative loan of $125 million to the German government. And the next day there was a crash on the New York Stock Exchange. Kreiger's stock was saved by American financiers. "Match King" was closely associated with a large bank Lee Higginson, interlocked, in turn, the capital with the Rockefeller group. In Europe, Kreiger cooperated with a dozen large and small banks, competing with the powerful Wallenberg and Rothschild clans.

Two years after the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange, the Craiger empire not only did not sell a single enterprise, but even continued to expand in a variety of directions, so for numerous small banks and shareholders revolver shot that cut off the life of Craiger, was a signal of bankruptcy.

The investigation into the circumstances of the match king's death was entrusted to Commissaire Mango of the mobile brigade of the Paris Sûreté. Craiger's Parisian secretary, Karin Bockmann, identified her boss in the murdered man, and the vice-president of the Craiger concern Littorin confirmed her testimony. From the farewell letter addressed to Littorin, it was clear that a certain doctor in America strongly advised Ivar in the interest of health completely removed from business. He, Kreiger, feeling infinitely tired and no longer able to bear the hardships of the crisis, decided to retire from life.

many people did not believe that the millionaire had shot himself. Ivar Kreiger had arrived in France from the United States on the Ile de France just one day before the suicide, on Friday morning to be exact, and, to all appearances, was planning to spend more than a week in the French capital. He called his brother Torsten in Stockholm, told him about the results of his trip to the U.S. and said that he would also have important negotiations with bankers in Paris. According to his brother, Ivar was extremely optimistic and even hinted that all the troubles would now be behind him.

Kreiger was a strange suicide. Before he put a bullet in his heart, he had scheduled a number of business meetings. At one of them, scheduled for 11 a.m. at the Hotel de Rin, Vice-President Littorin was summoned from Stockholm.

Until the evening the death of the "match king" was kept secret, just until the hour when the stock exchange closed in New York. This postponement for certain financial circles came in handy.

In Stockholm, too, they learned about the unexpected death of Ivar Kreiger only by the evening of March 12. Holders of securities of the Kreiger concern and its creditors still hoped that it would be possible to somehow, if not prevent, at least delay the fall in the share price of the "match empire". Craiger's partners, the American banking house Higginson and other interested parties denied rumors that the concern Craiger is on the verge of financial collapse. As proof, they cited the previous year's final balance sheet of Kreiger & Toll, according to which its assets amounted to one hundred million crowns.

On March 22, 1932 Ivar Kreiger's body was cremated in Stockholm. Ten days later, the press reported that Kreiger & Toll's 1930 business report was a forgery. The London intermediary firm of Price & Waterhouse, which was entrusted with the inspection of the group's business records, found that Ivar Kreiger had repeatedly given instructions to embellish or falsify the balance sheet. Assets were overstated, income was falsified, and liabilities were eliminated.

The "Napoleon of the world economy" turned out to be a high-class swindler who had made a fortune in colossal loan deals, which he entered into with no cash on hand. The books of all subsidiaries and companies were filled with fictitious licenses, concessions, permits, non-existent transactions and contracts. The dividends that were regularly paid to investors came... from the investors themselves! That is, new investments covered the interest on old ones. Most of the funds ended up in Ivar Kreiger's personal accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

There seemed to be no end to the revelations. By April 1, 1933, the Group had to pay 6.5 million pounds in bank advances in England alone, and in U.S. banks the Group owed $9 million.

A number of facts have been made public by the Swedish criminal police. In the safe of the match trust were kept forty-two debentures of the Italian government totaling over one hundred thousand English pounds. They were printed in English, guaranteed by the Italian state and signed by the Italian Minister of Finance - quite a real value. However, the Italian government knew nothing about these securities, because they were printed ... in a Stockholm printing house, and the order was made by Ivar Kreiger himself, and he also forged the signature of the Italian Minister of Finance. In the same safe were kept and two bonds of the Italian government, each for 1 million 533 thousand 700 British pounds. These, too, proved to be counterfeit.

Then came another revelation. As it turned out, back in 1925, the first agreement of the concern with the Polish government on the match monopoly was so "adjusted" by Ivar Kreiger that in the accounting books income was shown overstated. It was further discovered that Kreiger's concern was buying its own securities through front men in order to increase the share price.

The directors were forced to repent and confess to falsifying the balance sheet, which they had done on the orders of the boss. At the same time, a couple of former executive employees of Kreiger & Toll were exposed in the course of the audit, who had embezzled 165,000 kroner and in 1931 founded their own brokerage firm with the money.

Without slowing down, the avalanche of revelations rolled on, and it seemed that the Kreiger Group had long ago gone bankrupt and still existed solely due to the fraudulent manipulations of Kreiger. And his last trip to the United States, and the planned negotiations in Paris had one goal - to get money for the ruined concern.

The brother of the late "match king" Torsten Kreiger was forced to answer for the machinations of Ivar. In 1936, the Swedish Supreme Court sentenced him to 12 months in prison for false bankruptcy and one million kroner in damages.