Following their earlier convictions for copyright infringement, Pirate Bay co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, former site spokesman Peter Sunde, and financier Carl Lundström all owe a considerable amount in damages.
Collectively the four originally owed 46 million kronor ($7.03m) to the movie and recording company plaintiffs in the case to compensate them for their claimed losses. However, as revealed earlier this year, due to added interest that amount has been growing since May 31, 2006.
By February 2012 it had reached 73 million kronor ($11.16m) but today another 3 million kronor can be added to that, making a total to date of $11.62m.
But despite these ever-growing telephone-number sized figures, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the recording and movie studios will recover any significant amount from any of the four.
Carl Ulf Sture Lundström (born 13 April 1960, Filipstad, Sweden) is a Swedish businessman.
Carl Lundström is the son of Ulf Lundström and the grandson of Karl Edvard Lundström, founder of the world’s largest crisp bread producer Wasabröd. 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 Sandoz, 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, which at the time hosted the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay. 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”.[1]
Political affiliations
According to the Swedish anti-racist magazine Expo, Lundström is a financier of various far-right extremist organizations and has been a member of the racist campaign organization Bevara Sverige Svenskt (“Keep Sweden Swedish”) and the xenophobic Folkviljan mot massinvandring (“the People’s will against mass immigration”).[2] Some years later he was noted as a financier of the Swedish Progress Party.[2] He left the Progress Party in 1992 for the newly founded New Democracy.
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.[2]
In 2005, Lundström supported a group within the Swedish Taxpayers’ Association, who aimed for power over the organization. The group had ties to the Sweden Democrats, 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, extremist party National Democrats and has ordered Nazi and revisionist material from companies that promotes the thought of white supremacy.[2]
