The roots of Lindgren Inc. go back to the Second World War and Stockholm. During the war, Sweden was a neutral state, but did business with both sides (which some might argue prevented its neutrality from being violated).

Sven Lindgren, grandfather of Oscar, was running a shipping line at the time and with the world at war, he found himself increasingly being approached to smuggle people/things in and out through the blockades established by both sides. He took the money from both sides, only starting to turn down some of the German requests when the war was clearly going against the Nazis. In fact, he arranged for one SS officer trying to flee Germany across the Baltic to suffer a fatal accident.

When the Cold War commenced, Sweden continued to remain neutral, developing a strong military to protect its national interests from both sides (as Sweden was an obvious shortcut for attacks to/from the USSR). Lindgren's wartime reputation was known to both superpowers and in the late 1950s, he was contacted by a Major in the KGB to engage in some covert operations that the Soviet Union wanted to be very deniable. He carried out the operation, of which the details remain a secret, even to his fellow colleagues - for Lindgren himself died in 1964. The general onspiracy theories are that he bumped off Hugh Gaitskell or even JFK, but there is no evidence to support that. Whatever it was, it was certainly impressive enough that the KGB hired him for other work.

At the same time, the CIA and Swedish intelligence also began to engage his son and heir Henrik Lindgren for covert work they could not have their own governments knowing too much about. One particular defection of a Soviet intelligence officer in 1978 is considered a highlight of his career and in-house speculation has them responsible for the murder of Olof Palme in 1982 on the orders of the
South African regime.

The ending of the Cold War around 1990 led to a considerable decline in the mercenary work of Lindgren, although that isn't to say they didn't do anything - there are reports of some strange goings-down in Beirut in 1992 involving a salmon and a PLO commander.

When the War on Terror began in 2001, Lindgren found their services in demand again - for operations like rendition, assassination of hard-to-reach terrorists and in one case, retrieval of a Soviet tactical nuclear device from Singapore.

In 2008, Henrik retired and his son, Oscar, took over the business, relocating from Stockholm to Antwerp in Belgium, where the HQ is currently located.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 21:36, Sun 21 Feb 2016.