Pretty much. The $28 million was a loan from Ivar Krueger and one of the stipulations for the loan was monopoly of the matchstick market to which Romania evidently agreed.
Considering $28 million in 1929 in todays monetary value is roughly $3.3 billion, I'd say Romania got a pretty good deal in the end.
I'd say that's an insane way to look at it - a wealthy country demanding payment from an impoverished country emerging from decades of suffering for a debt over 50 years old, and you think that they got a good deal? Wow
Ivar Kreuger was a businessman, not a "wealthy country". The collector of the debt was the company ABB, with help from the Swedish government. Romania essentially got ~$3,28 billion of their (interest free) debt written off if they in the end only paid $120 million. It was a "good deal" in the sense that they didnt have to pay more, or even the full amount.
It wouldn't have been so two-faced if OP in the next breath didn't complain about being swindled by another even poorer country.
Didn't want for my comment to come up as "two-faced", just wanted to make it a little more obvious that when it comes to international relations (meaning relations between countries) the "natural law" or the "common law" or whatever you want to call the law that governs the interaction of people who live in the same "commonwealth" (to borrow from Hobbes) does not apply anymore, it's the rule of the strongest or the most skilful, which generally comes down to how much money a certain country has put aside (either for military spending or for building up "soft power", as in Sweden's case).
That's why countries like Sweden (or Austria or The Netherlands or Denmark or Norway) punch way above their weight when it comes to international relations, while poorer countries (like Romania) have to contend with what's left when the richer countries finish their meal.
I'm not a nationalist nor a patriot, so I don't genuinely care how my country is seen around the world (I lied a little: I'm way over nationalistic when it comes to our football team, but that's about it), it's just that after I started visiting the other European countries I wanted to better understand how come they're so ahead of us in economic terms. Of course, they have better productivity, better access to capital, maybe a more skilful workforce, but that didn't explain said huge difference between a middle-sized town from Austria compared to a middle-sized town from Romania, the people from the two towns seemed to be pretty much the same, how come a teacher from said Romanian town earns 200-300 euros per months while a teacher from the Austrian town earns 10 times as much?
And commenting on this:
> Ivar Kreuger was a businessman, not a "wealthy country". The collector of the debt was the company ABB, with help from the Swedish government
This is the definition of State capitalism, which should be bad (I tend on the libertarian side of things). If said company had unpaid debts from the Romanian Government there were other ways of trying to get back said money, but when you go back to mommy/your Government and ask for help then you're not just an independent "businessman" anymore, you're a State-supported company. Also see Apple and its recent tax-scandal. Not a day had passed since the tax imposition decision and the US Government felt entitled to come and protect its precious little baby. Like I said, this is not capitalism, it's the worst type of mercantilism, which I personally thought it was dead when the 18th century ended.
Why should someone not get the current value for his property just because he is rich?
How exactly is it the rich persons responsibility for what happened to Romania in the last decades? It wasn't the rich person from Sweden that forced Communism on Romanians, it was Romanians forcing it on Romanians and it was Romanians that persecuted and killed Romanians who didn't agree with Communism.
Considering $28 million in 1929 in todays monetary value is roughly $3.3 billion, I'd say Romania got a pretty good deal in the end.