Carl Lundstrom, the co-founder and early financial backer of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, died after a small plane he was flying crashed in the Slovenian mountains.

Lundstrom, who was also a member of the far-right Alternative for Sweden party, was travelling from the Croatian capital of Zagreb to Zurich in Switzerland when his plane crashed.

The 64-year-old businessman was flying his Piper Mooney Ovation M20R, the party said, confirming reports of his death in a Facebook post on Tuesday. Lundstrom was alone in the plane, they added.

The propeller plane split into two after crashing into a wooden cabin in the Velika Planina mountain in the north of Slovenia on Monday. Bad weather prevented rescue teams from discovering the body and parts of the plane inside the cabin until Tuesday, AFP reported.

“Lundstrom, a legend and veteran of Swedish nationalism, died in a plane crash on Monday,” the far-right party wrote.

The plane likely crashed due to spatial disorientation in bad weather, local media website 24.ur reported. It added that the aircraft started spiralling downward from the altitude of 2.5km.

He was one of the early financial backers of The Pirate Bay, which was founded in 2003 to allow users to dodge copyright fees and share music and other files. His company Rix Telecom provided services and equipment to The Pirate Bay till 2005.

The Pirate Bay hit one million unique users in May 2006, the same month that Swedish police first raided its servers.

Lundstrom was one of the defendants charged with being an “accessory to breaching copyright law” when the website was dragged to court for promoting copyright infringement. He was sentenced to prison in 2012 and handed down heavy fines along with other founders.

However, following an appeal, his prison sentence was shortened to four months instead of one year.

Lundstrom also financed the Swedish Progress Party in 1991, which later merged with the Sweden Democrats. The Alternative for Sweden said Lundstrom joined the far-right party in 2018 and contested the 2021 Assembly election, which he lost.

Lundström was also the heir to a Swedish ‘crispbread’ brand known as Wasabröd, the Metro reported.