Ikea Attorney Blames Security Executive For 'System of Espionage'
Prosecutor Wants Prison Time for Two Exec's + $2M

A ‘System of Espionage’ Reigned at Ikea, a French Prosecutor Charges

In a case riveting national attention, Ikea France is charged with violating privacy rights by surveilling unions, employees and customers.

The USB stick mysteriously appeared from an unidentified deliveryman. It held an explosive trove: a cache of startling emails detailing an intricate effort by Ikea executives in France to dig up information on employees, job applicants and even customers.

“Tell me if these people are known to the police,” read one executive’s message to a private investigator, seeking illicit background checks on hundreds of Ikea job applicants.

“A model worker has become a radical employee representative overnight,” read another. “We need to find out why.”

A decade after those emails surfaced, they are at the center of a criminal trial that has riveted public attention in France. Prosecutors are accusing the French arm of Ikea, the Swedish home furnishings giant, and some of its former executives of engineering a “system of espionage” from 2009 to 2012.

The alleged snooping was used to investigate employees and union organizers, check up on workers on medical leave and size up customers seeking refunds for botched orders. A former military operative was hired to execute some of the more clandestine operations.

The case stoked outrage in 2012 after the emails were leaked to the French news media, and Ikea promptly fired several executives in its French unit, including its chief executive. There is no evidence that similar surveillance happened in any of the other 52 countries where the global retailer hones a fresh-faced image of stylish thriftiness served with Swedish meatballs.

But the extensive activity in France, which court documents suggested stretched back to 2002, has renewed questions about data violations by corporations in a country that has elevated privacy rights in the digital age.

The case, which stems from a lawsuit brought by France’s Force Ouvrière union and nearly 120 plaintiffs, mostly from labor organizations, has also cast a light on deep-seated tensions in France between employers and unions, which tend to be more heated than in Sweden.

Paméla Tabardel, the deputy public prosecutor of Versailles, near Ikea France’s headquarters in Plaisir, is seeking a fine of 2 million euros ($2.35 million) against Ikea France, prison terms of at least a year for two former company officials and a private investigator, and fines for some store managers and police officers. In all, 15 people are charged. A verdict from a panel of judges is scheduled for June 15.

Ikea France illegally surveilled at least 400 people and used the information to its advantage.

Ikea’s lawyer, Emmanuel Daoud, denied that systemwide surveillance had been carried out at Ikea’s stores in France, more than two dozen at the time, and demanded that the charges against the company be dropped. He argued that any privacy violations had been the work of a single person, Jean-François Paris, the French unit’s head of risk management, who Mr. Daoud said had acted “alone” without the knowledge of top Ikea executives.

Mr. Paris testified that Ikea France executives had been aware of and supported the activity. “This was not a personal step, but a system put in place at the request of the management of Ikea,” he said, accusing the company of “cowardice” for pinning the blame on him.

A lawyer for Jean-Louis Baillot, the fired chief executive who is charged in the case, denied that his client had been aware of any systematic surveillance and said Mr. Baillot had been wrongfully dismissed.

Victims’ lawyers described a methodic operation that ran along two tracks: one involving background and criminal checks of job candidates and employees without their knowledge, and another targeting union leaders and members. nytimes.com