IKEA is fined £1million and former CEO is given two-year suspended jail term by French court after the company spied on employees for three years
- Ikea France today fined £1million after being found guilty of spying on its staff
- Former CEO Jean-Louis Baillot was handed a two-year suspended prison term
- Prosecutors accused the Swedish company of carrying out ‘mass surveillance’
Ikea France was today fined £1million and its former CEO was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence after the company spied on its employees for three years.
The Swedish furniture giant was found guilty of setting up an elaborate system to illegally snoop on the private lives of hundreds of current staff and potential new-hires between 2009 and 2012.
A French court fined the subsidiary £1million and handed its former CEO Jean-Louis Baillot a suspended two-year prison sentence.
The ruling was less severe than recommended by prosecutors, who accused the furniture company of illicitly carrying out ‘mass surveillance.’
Ikea France was today found guilty of setting up an elaborate system to illegally snoop on the private lives of hundreds of current staff and potential new-hires between 2009 and 2012
Baillot, Ikea France’s boss between 1996 and 2002, was also fined £43,000 after he was found guilty of ‘receiving personal data by fraudulent means.’
He was cleared of several other charges, including ‘violating professional secrecy.’
Prosecutors claim the illegal practices date back to the early 2000s.
Baillot’s lawyer, Francois Saint-Pierre, said the former Ikea boss was ‘shocked’ by the sentence and is now considering an appeal.
A union representative, Adel Amara, who was among a total of 120 plaintiffs, said he was ‘pleased’ with the outcome of the trial, but called the punishments ‘a little too lenient.’
Ikea executives and store managers were among 15 people on trial in March accused of spying on the private lives and criminal records of employees and applicants.
The allegations included claims that Ikea launched investigations into how low-paid employees could drive Porsches and BMWs and targeted an employee in Bordeaux described by managers as a ‘protester’.
A French court fined the subsidiary £1million and handed its former CEO Jean-Louis Baillot (above) a suspended two-year prison sentence
Also in the dock were four policemen accused of taking payments to hand over criminal records.
It is thought up to £540,000 was earmarked each year for such investigations, which took place over more than a decade.
The charges against Ikea included illegal gathering of personal information, receiving illegally gathered personal information, and violating professional confidentiality.
Prosecutors said Ikea’s French operation began gathering data on staff and job applicants as far back as 1999 while under the leadership of Jean-Francois Paris.
They claimed Paris regularly sent lists of names for private investigators to snoop on, with people targeted for their political beliefs and spending habits.
Among the targets was a staff member in Bordeaux ‘who used to be a model employee, but has suddenly become a protester’.
‘We want to know how that change happened,’ Paris said in an email, wondering whether there might be ‘a risk of eco-terrorism’.
In another case, Paris wanted to know how an employee could afford to drive a brand-new BMW convertible.
It was also alleged that Ikea sought to catch an employee who had claimed unemployment benefits but drove a Porsche.
One Ikea employee, Hocine Redouane, said during the trial that the company wrongly suspected him of being a bank robber because their investigation system found criminal records involving a robber with the same name.
‘Such a system can easily slip into abuse,’ Redouane said.
The firm sometimes targeted union members and their representatives, prosecutors had alleged.
An Ikea employee and lawyers arrive at the Versailles’ courthouse on March 22
Requests from Jean-Francois Paris usually went to Jean-Pierre Foures, the boss of surveillance company Eirpace, it was claimed.
He would then send Paris confidential information, which prosecutors say he got from the police database STIC with the help of the four officers.
Emmanuel Daoud, a lawyer for Ikea France, acknowledged that the case had revealed ‘organisational weaknesses’.
He said the company had since implemented an action plan, including a complete revamp of hiring procedures.
‘Whatever the court rules, the company has already been punished very severely in terms of its reputation,’ he said.
Prosecutors began investigating the case after newspapers Le Canard Enchaine and Mediapart uncovered the surveillance scheme in 2012.
Since then, Ikea has sacked four top executives but unions argue the internal measures do not go far enough.
‘We’re here to today to show that there are these types of actions inside companies that police trade unions and above all their employees,’ a senior member of the hard-left CGT union, Amar Lagha, told reporters.
French Ikea currently employs some 10,000 people at 34 stores, and announced an overall profit of £2.6billion in 2019.
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