IKEA’s billionaire founder Ingvar Kamprad has pledged £1bn to charity in a move which follows revelations about his Nazi past.
The 85-year-old businessman has instructed the IKEA foundation, which has owned the company since 1982, to more than double its charitable spending to close to £100m a year.
Around £40m will go to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, split over three years, with the rest shared between UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR and UNDP, and Save the Children, to which the foundation is already the largest corporate donor.
“We will donate 1bn Kr per year (£95.7m),” Per Heggenes, Mr Kamprad’s press spokesman, told Sweden’s Expressen newspaper. “There’s been a strong will from Ingvar to do more things for more people by setting a more ambitious goal for the foundation.”
The move follows last month’s revelations that Mr Kamprad at the age of 17 had been an active recruiter and a registered member of the Svensk Socialistisk Samling (SSS), the successor to the Swedish Nazi party.
Mr Kamprad’s youthful Far Right sympathies first came to light in 1994, with the posthumous publication of the letters of Per Engdhal, the leader of the Far Right New Swedish movement of the 1950s, which detailed the friendship and financial support he had enjoyed from Mr Kamprad.
IKEA’s billionaire founder Ingvar Kamprad has pledged £1bn to charity in a move which follows revelations about his Nazi past.The 85-year-old businessman has instructed the IKEA foundation, which has owned the company since 1982, to more than double its charitable spending to close to £100m a year.Around £40m will go to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, split over three years, with the rest shared between UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR and UNDP, and Save the Children, to which the foundation is already the largest corporate donor.“We will donate 1bn Kr per year (£95.7m),” Per Heggenes, Mr Kamprad’s press spokesman, told Sweden’s Expressen newspaper. “There’s been a strong will from Ingvar to do more things for more people by setting a more ambitious goal for the foundation.”The move follows last month’s revelations that Mr Kamprad at the age of 17 had been an active recruiter and a registered member of the Svensk Socialistisk Samling (SSS), the successor to the Swedish Nazi party.Mr Kamprad’s youthful Far Right sympathies first came to light in 1994, with the posthumous publication of the letters of Per Engdhal, the leader of the Far Right New Swedish movement of the 1950s, which detailed the friendship and financial support he had enjoyed from Mr Kamprad.
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