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French court has ordered IKEA Pay a fine of 1 million euros and convict the former chief executive of his French operations for organizing an extensive espionage operation and deceiving employees.
According to Agence France-Presse, the Criminal Court of Versailles ruled on Tuesday that IKEA used private investigators and “fraudulent means” to dig out information about employees and job applicants between 2009 and 2012.
Prosecutors are pushing for the Ingka Group’s largest furniture retailer in the world to impose a fine of 2 million euros and imprison Jean-Louis Baillot, the former chief executive of the French subsidiary.
Baillot served as the head of the IKEA France company from 1996 to 2009. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years probation and a fine of 50,000 euros.
“Mr. Baillot is very shocked by this decision,” said François Saint-Pierre, the former chief executive’s lawyer. “He denied that he had instructed to monitor IKEA employees and planned to appeal.”
This case has aroused a lot of public interest in France, although it is centered on events ten years ago, because it has exacerbated current tensions between employers and labor unions and concerns about the abuse of personal data and privacy.
The scandal came to light in 2012 when the police raided IKEA’s French headquarters in Evelyn near Versailles. After a preliminary judicial investigation into the allegations of illegal surveillance by members of two union organizations, officials confiscated documents and checked computers.
The court found on Tuesday that management used Eirpace, a private security company, to illegally obtain police records and collect personal data.
In addition to Baillot’s two-year suspended sentence, Jean-Francois Paris, who was the head of risk at IKEA France from 2002 to 2012 and carried out large-scale employee inspections, was sentenced to 18 months suspended sentence , And sentenced to probation. According to Agence France-Presse, the fine was 10,000 Euros.
Critics said at the time that IKEA’s secret culture had become strained by its rapid expansion into new countries. The company also faces a bribery scandal in Russia, much the same as its problems in France.
But it has continued to open up in the past decade, gaining a deeper understanding of its business and balance sheet, first disclosed its profits in 2010, and provided more explanations for its complex organizational structure.
After the ruling was made on Tuesday morning, IKEA France stated that it had “apologized for this serious damage to the company’s values and ethical standards” and “strongly condemned the practices of its former employees”.
This article has been corrected, stating that Jean-Louis Baillot served as CEO of IKEA France from 1996 to 2009
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