Olof Aschberg  Olof Aschberg (22 July 1877 – 21 April 1960) - Swedish banker of Jewish descent, head of Stockholm bank Nya Banken (Nya Banken). From August 18, 1922 - Director General of Roscombank, which was later transformed into Vnesheconombank. Aschberg was a leftist sympathizer and helped finance the Bolsheviks in Russia. In gratitude, the Bolshevik government allowed Aschberg to do business with Soviet Union during the 1920s. His codirectors included prominent members of Swedish cooperatives and Swedish socialists, including G. W. Dahl, K. G. Rosling, and . Olof founded in Stockholm the first Swedish bank for trade unions and cooperatives (Nya Banken) in 1912 and became a friend of Hjalmar Branting. When financial operations in favour of the Germans in 1918 caused him trouble with the Allies of World War I, the bank was renamed Svensk Ekonomiebolaget. He was already a successful banker and businessman when he met first Willi Münzenberg who visited the Stockholm Youth Socialist Congress of 1917. Later, during the Bolsheviks aspirations to rebuild the Russian economy, it was Münzenberg's task to expand their modest pool of capital by floating a so-called "workers' loan" using his "Workers International Relief" (WIR). By means of this subterfuge the money used for buying machines and goods in the West looked like being the outcome of proletarian support, in reality it came directly from the Kremlin, confiscated from Russia's rich and the Church. Established in Berlin in the 1920s, Aschberg's Guarantee and Credit Bank for the East was charged with repayment of the WIR workers' loan, although he had not been very fond of it from its very beginning on and had even contributed to deep six it soon after the launch. Aschberg had already gained the Soviet leaders' esteem by being one of the main connections in the early years after 1917 in evading the international boycott on gold robbed by the Bolsheviks, which he offered on the Stockholm market after having the bullions melted down and given new markings. At the end of the 1920s Aschberg moved to France, where he bought Château du Bois du Rocher at Jouy-en-Josas (in 1950 offered to the Unesco and subsequently sold to the Yvelines department). There is in the State Dept. files a Green Cipher message from the U.S. embassy in Christiania (named Oslo, 1925), Norway, dated February 21, 1918: ""Am informed that Bolshevik funds are deposited in Nya Banken, Stockholm, Legation Stockholm advised.