Kenneth Kronberg - Print Shop's Financial Problems

Print Shop's Financial Problems

Nicholas F. Benton, owner of the Falls Church News-Press and himself a former member of the LaRouche movement, writes that at the beginning of 2007, the LaRouche movement realized Kronberg's printing company (PMR) was on the verge of bankruptcy. He says that the financial problems stemmed from the movement's failure to pay the print shop for its services, as a consequence of which the company was in arrears with its tax payments, including employee withholding.

One ex-LaRouche supporter told Nicholas Benton: "There was never any money at PMR and members were paid only half their salaries, which were already pittances, and then Ken paid himself only once a month."

Klein writes that in March 2007, the LaRouche Political Action Committee told Kronberg that they had decided not to pay the money they owed him, and that they also asked that he return a $100,000 advance to the company, which Avi Klein writes Kronberg had already spent. Klein writes that Kronberg feared the movement would raid an escrow account that held $235,000 the company owed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

So long as Kronberg was in control of the printing operation, Klein writes, he hoped he was safe from LaRouche movement attacks on his family, because the print shop was so central to the movement's existence. When he realized it was about to collapse, he reportedly told his wife, two days before his death: "I will be vilified. You and I will be vilified like nothing you've seen yet. It will be ugly; it will be brutal. This is going to be the worst week of my life."