But since December last year, the former CEO of Escobar Inc has been in Spanish custody and risks extradition to the United States, where he is suspected of fraud, smuggling and money laundering.
In his attempts to escape prison in the USA, Gustafsson has both admitted gross fraud in Sweden and sued the Swedish state.
– The status now is that he is in prison in Madrid, after being shuffled between different detention cells in Malaga. His Spanish lawyer has been completely distraught and said he has never seen anyone treated this badly, says his Swedish lawyer Sebastian Scheiman to Dagens ETC.
From wild goose to instant noodles
The life locked up, where according to his own statement he lives on instant noodles, is far from the existence at the luxury hotel Burj Al Arab Jumeirah in Dubai, which is depicted at the beginning of the SVT documentary “Olof Inc”. Here he lubricates the gizzard with wild goose that is served in the room and sulks that the hotel no longer offers a daily delivery of exclusive Hermès perfume. But soon the days in the Gulf metropolis are numbered. His wife Svetlana is heavily pregnant, and soon Gustafsson, who left Sweden as an 18-year-old, will return so that the daughter can grow up in Sweden. The contrast is great when he is suddenly back in his childhood home, a three-room apartment on Ekerö.
He has not lived in “Jante-Sweden” since he moved to the USA as an 18-year-old after a dispute with his father. According to Gustafsson, the father refused to let his son take over the four companies the teenager is said to have built up during high school. In both Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, a petite and suit-clad Olof K Gustafsson trumpeted that he aimed to become a dollar billionaire. He also took the high school exam after two years, with good grades (24 MVG, six VG and one G), which is confirmed by Kungsholmen’s high school.
“Doesn’t waste time on feelings”
After the move to the United States, things finally went better monetarily. Olof K Gustafsson tells about how he spent almost two years as a lousy bank and living in a cheap office space in Los Angeles. before finding a lucrative business model in his 20s. He began selling loans for a lending institution, then himself issuing mortgages to people on the brink of ruin who could not turn to the banks.
– We had to kick 50 percent of the people out onto the street within about a month. If you have signed the contract, you have signed the contract. It was hard to realize how angry people get when they’ve lost everything, says Gustafsson in the documentary, adding that he had a habit of driving around with an AK-47 in the tailgate because the threat posed to him was so great.
Somewhere after that, according to Gustafsson in 2014, he met Roberto Escobar, Pablo Escobar’s brother and the Medillin cartel’s former head of execution and accountant.
– He signed the agreements directly, claims Gustafsson, who quickly got a CEO post when the duo founded Escobar Inc.
That he went from making people homeless to cherishing the memory of a cartel leader with thousands of lives on his conscience, Gustafsson – who also idolizes Vladimir Putin and collects Hitler memorabilia – explains in the documentary.
– You shouldn’t spend time on emotions, then you waste time.
Trump and Picasso
Gustafsson has also claimed that he helped Donald Trump with “social media bots”, which is supported by an article in The Washington Post where Gustafsson’s Twitter account is described as the driving force in hyping up Donald Trump with bots before the 2016 election.
According to information to Svenska Dagbladet, a French police investigation is also ongoing into Gustafsson’s suspected art smuggling with alleged Picasso paintings, something that is also depicted in the documentary. There, Gustafsson shovels several paintings, which appear to have been painted in Picasso’s post-war period, into the tailgate of his white Rolls-Royce and drives them to Cologne.
The gray area gives the most money.
– There are white zones and black zones, and everything in between that may or may not be legal. The gray zone brings the most money, commented Gustafsson.
Has confessed to crimes in Sweden
Since its inception, Escobar Inc has made a name for itself by issuing subpoenas against everything from Netflix to bars named Esco bar. And so they have cheated customers by selling repackaged gold-plated Samsung phones marketed by naked girls. The fact that hundreds of buyers have never received their phones is one of the reasons why the US now wants to see Olof K Gustafsson extradited.
On December 4, his house in Malaga was stormed by Spanish police accompanied by federal agents from the US IRS.
My feeling is that the Swedish judiciary does not want to clash with the American one.
In addition to fraud, Gustafsson is also suspected of smuggling and money laundering. But Gustafsson has argued that it is the Swedish judiciary that should pursue the case, and has admitted gross fraud in Sweden from custody in Spain in an attempt to return home. But the Swedish preliminary investigation has been closed because there are no known plaintiffs.
– My feeling is that the Swedish justice system does not want to collide with the American one, says the lawyer Sebastian Scheiman.
Was offered to become an infiltrator
Scheiman does not think there are sufficient reasons to extradite Gustafsson to the United States and filed a lawsuit against the Swedish state on Monday. There, Scheiman argues that Sweden has a responsibility to protect its citizens. It also appears that Olof K Gustafsson has told American police about the Escobar family’s bank accounts: a total of 320, of which Gustafsson allegedly had access to “the smallest”, loaded with 77 million dollars. Gustafsson is also said to have been asked to work as an infiltrator for US authorities, but declined citing that it would be “equal to a death sentence”.
At the same time, the deadline for a Swedish extradition request has expired, and Olof K Gustafsson’s extradition will be determined by Spain’s willingness to comply with the US request. According to Sebastian Scheiman, this means that Olof K Gustafsson risks spending the rest of his life in an American prison.
It is obvious that they want to squeeze the Escobar family.
– I absolutely believe that he risks life in prison in the United States. They do not have a penalty discount, but the penalties are stacked on top of each other. It is clear that they want to squeeze the Escobar family and see Olof as an entrance.
Tags: Mega mythomaniac shameless businessman Olof Gustafsson risks life imprisonment USA
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