Carl Lundström
Encyclopedia
Filipstad
Filipstad is a locality and the seat of Filipstad Municipality, Värmland County, Sweden with 6,177 inhabitants in 2005.Filipstad was granted city privileges in 1611 by Charles IX of Sweden, who named it after his son Duke Carl Philip .After a major fire destroyed forest and town in 1694, Filipstad...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
) is a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
businessman.
Carl Lundström is the son of Ulf Lundström and the grandson of Karl Edvard Lundström, founder of the world's largest crisp bread
Crisp bread
Crisp bread or hard bread is a flat and dry type of bread or cracker, containing mostly rye flour...
producer Wasabröd
Wasabröd
The Swedish company Wasabröd is the largest producer in the world of Scandinavian style crisp bread . The Wasabröd company has been in business since 1919, opening its first bakery in the city of Skellefteå...
. When his father Ulf Lundström died in 1973, Carl Lundström was one of five heirs to Wasabröd and its subsidiary OLW. In 1982 Wasabröd was sold to the Swiss pharmaceutical company
Pharmaceutical company
The pharmaceutical industry develops, produces, and markets drugs licensed for use as medications. Pharmaceutical companies are allowed to deal in generic and/or brand medications and medical devices...
Sandoz
Sandoz
Founded in 2003, Sandoz presently is the generic drug subsidiary of Novartis, a multinational pharmaceutical company. The company develops, manufactures and markets generic drugs as well as pharmaceutical and biotechnological active ingredients....
, making Lundström a fortune. Lundström has founded and financed a number of companies, notably Rix Telecom AB (also known as Port80) which sold colocation space and Internet access to PRQ HB
PRQ
PeRiQuito AB is a Swedish Internet service provider and web hosting company created in 2004.-Ownership:Based in Stockholm, PRQ is owned by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, two founders of The Pirate Bay.- Business model :...
, which at the time hosted the BitTorrent tracker
BitTorrent tracker
A BitTorrent tracker is a server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. It is also, in the absence of extensions to the original protocol, the only major critical point, as clients are required to communicate with the tracker to initiate downloads...
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
. Tobias Andersson, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, has said: "We wouldn't have been able to start the site without the support from Carl Lundström".
Political affiliations
According to the Swedish anti-racist magazine ExpoExpo (magazine)
Expo is a Swedish anti-racist magazine, started in 1995 and issued by the non-profit Expo Foundation . The magazine, issued four times a year, contains investigative journalism focused on nationalist, racist, anti-democratic, anti-semitic and far-right movements and organisations...
, Lundström is a financier of various far-right extremist organizations and has been a member of the racist campaign organization Bevara Sverige Svenskt
Bevara Sverige Svenskt
Bevara Sverige Svenskt was a Swedish racist movement based in Stockholm and is a slogan used by various Swedish nationalist parties. The stated objective of the BSS movement, and the aim of the slogan, was to initiate a debate in order to stop immigration by non-Europeans and repatriate non-ethnic...
("Keep Sweden Swedish") and the xenophobic Folkviljan mot massinvandring (the "People's will and mass immigration"). Some years later he was noted as a financier of the Swedish Progress Party
Progress Party (Sweden)
The Progress Party was a minor Swedish populist political party that existed in various forms from 1968 to the 2000s, when local parties merged with the Sweden Democrats, or developed into distinct local parties. It was based mostly in Scania, although it at times had active local chapters other...
. He left the Progress Party in 1992 for the newly founded New Democracy
New Democracy (Sweden)
New Democracy was a political party in Sweden, founded in 1991 and elected into the Swedish Parliament in its first election, falling equally fast out again in 1994....
.
However, when Lundström's membership in New Democracy and his extremist history was brought to attention by the media the party's leadership demanded his expulsion. In March 1992, Lundström left the party and, according to himself, politics.
In 2005, Lundström supported a group within the Swedish Taxpayers' Association
Swedish Taxpayers' Association
The Swedish Taxpayers' Association is an association and taxpayers union in Sweden which advocates low taxes and efficiency in the public sector...
, who aimed for power over the organization. The group had ties to the Sweden Democrats
Sweden Democrats
The Sweden Democrats is a political party in Sweden, founded in 1988. SD describes itself as a nationalist movement although others use the term far-right. Since 2005, its party chairman is Jimmie Åkesson, while Björn Söder is the party secretary and parliamentary group leader. An Anemone...
, and wanted the organization to stress the issue of immigration, as the reason for the Swedish tax rates. Also, Lunström has donated money to the right wing National Democrats party and has ordered Nazi and revisionist material from companies that promotes the thought of white supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
.
Pirate Bay trial
Lundström was one of the four defendants in The Pirate Bay trialThe Pirate Bay trial
The Pirate Bay trial is a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay...
charged with "accessory to breaching copyright law". On 17 April 2009 Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
district court
Tingsrätt
Tingsrätt , käräjäoikeus or tingrett is a term used for district courts in Sweden, Finland and Norway...
found Lundström and his three co-defendants guilty and sentenced them to one year in prison and to jointly pay 30 million SEK
Swedish krona
The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...
(app. €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
2.7 million or USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
3.5 million) in damages. Lundström's lawyers appealed the verdict to the Svea Court of Appeal
Svea Court of Appeal
The Svea Court of Appeal , located in Stockholm, is one of six appellate courts in the Swedish legal system. It was founded in 1614 and was the highest court in Sweden until 1789, when the Supreme Court of Sweden was established....
the very same day. The appeal was a partial success, as his sentence has been reduced to four months, but the fine was increased to 32 million SEK.