March 12 in Swedish History
1932: Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur, and industrialist Ivar Kreuger is found dead in his apartment on 5, Avenue Victor Emanuel III (today Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt) in Paris.
After questioning Kreuger’s servants (his French maid Mademoiselle Barrault and the janitor, who had had contact with Kreuger in the morning), the French police and a physician came to the conclusion that Kreuger had shot himself some time between 10:45 a.m. and 12:10 p.m. A 9-mm semi-automatic gun was found on the bed next to his body. Prior to the apparent suicide, rumor had spread that Kreuger & Toll and other companies in Kreuger’s empire were financially unstable. Ivar Kreuger’s death triggered the so-called “Kreugerkraschen” (the Kreuger Crash), meaning the financial crisis that broke out in Sweden following the collapse of the Kreuger Concern.