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]

[edit] Political affiliations

According to the Swedish anti-racist magazine Expo, Lundström is a financier of various right wing organizations and was a member of the nationalist organization Bevara Sverige Svenskt ("Keep Sweden Swedish").^[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 was brought to attention by the media the party's leadership demanded his expulsion.^[2] In March 1992, Lundström left the party and, according to himself, politics.^[2] However, according to Expo, Lundström has later donated money to the National Democrats and other "far right parties" and also ordered "national socialist and revisionist material from white power companies".^[3]

[edit] Pirate Bay trial

Lundström was one of the four defendants in The Pirate Bay trial charged with "accessory to breaching copyright law". On 17 April 2009 Stockholm district court found Lundström and his three co-defendants guilty, and sentenced them to one year in prison and to jointly pay 30 million SEK (app. €2.7 million or USD 3.5 million) in damages. Lundström's lawyers appealed the verdict to the Svea Court of Appeal the very same day.^[4][5] If the verdict remains unchanged, Lundström would in practice have to pay the entire sum himself.^[6][7]

[edit] References

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