In a significant development of the spying scandal surrounding Swedish furniture retail giant Ikea, Mediapart has obtained evidence that the managing director of Ikea France personally took part in an underhand espionage operation that used illegal methods to gain information about the personal life of one of the company’s senior staff.
Documents accessed by Mediapart and published below here reveal how Jean-Louis Baillot, head of the company’s French operations from 1996 to 2009, and who is now Ikea’s director for international commercial operations, was aware, approved of and encouraged the surveillance methods used by Ikea France security chief Jean-François Paris.
Last week French investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaîné and Mediapart revealed how Ikea France had mounted an illegal operation starting in 2003 to obtain information from police files on employees, union officials, suppliers as well as certain customers who were in litigation with the furniture store chain.
An investigation into the covert activities was launched on March 1st by the Versailles public prosecutor’s office, and Ikea has temporarily suspended Paris from his duties. The company has also commissioned an internal investigation led by US law firm Skadden Arps. On Monday it issued a statement saying it “vigorously disapproved all practices that breach the respect of private life”.
However, the documents obtained by Mediapart demonstrate that the espionage cannot be dismissed as the sole responsibility of the company's security staff. They detail how, in 2008, Ikea France managing director Baillot, along with the company’s head of Human Resources and its security chief, led an illegal and highly intrusive investigation targeting the company’s deputy director of communications and interior store planning, Virginie Paulin.
A qualified architect, Paulin, now 51, joined Ikea’s French operation in 1997. She was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, a debilitating liver disease, shortly after taking up her post with the communications and store planning department in 2007. “I continued to work for a time, but at the beginning of 2008 I was really too exhausted,” Paulin told Mediapart. “I told the management, without saying precisely what I suffered from. I didn’t want to be like a plague victim nor an object of pity.”
Significantly handicapped by her condition, her medical sick leave certificate was renewed throughout 2008. During this time, she spent several stays resting at a house she owned in Morocco, in the town of Essaouira on the Atlantic coast. She told Mediapart that her trips to Morocco were made with the full knowledge and approval of both her doctor and the French social security services.
However, Baillot and his then director of Human Resources, Claire Hery, suspected that Paulin was simply enjoying an extended holiday under the cover of sick leave. They mounted an elaborate operation to prove the supposed fraud, tracing her trips, evidence of her purchase of the house in Essaouira and seeking evidence that doctors had signed false documents to support her sick leave.
On December 11th 2008, Ikea’s head of security, Jean-François Paris, sent an email (see document further below) to Jean-François Fourès, a detective who, since 2003, had been regularly employed by the company to investigate the past personal history of a number of Ikea employees.
In the correspondence, Paris commissioned Fourès to investigate the case of Virginie Paulin, described as “a person on sick leave since several months”, giving him her personal details that included her social security number, private address and phone number.
Paris wrote to Fourès: “Through outside sources we know that the person has stayed in Morocco over the following periods:
- July 10th 2008 to July 19th 2008. Easy Jet flights.
- August 8th 2008 to August 29th 2008. Easy Jet flights.
- October 22nd 2008 by Royal Air Maroc flight to November 7th by Easy Jet flight.”
The message continued: “All these trips were made without interruption of her sick leave, and without informing [social security office] the CPAM. Following checks by the CPAM, forgeries were presented. We know that this person bought a house (apartment) in Essaouira and that she uses her sick leave to look after the house. Given [that she is] in a higher management post in the company, we cannot tolerate this situation.”
Paris ends his email by asking “Can you confirm her trips outside the country? Can you confirm to me her property purchase?”, adding “do not hesitate to call me if any questions”. A final sentence, beginning in capital letters, read: “ATTENTION NEEDED URGENTLY MAX 3 WEEKS…is this possible?”
Enlargement : Illustration 3
Baited by a false airline competition
One and a half hours later, Paris sent another email to Fourès. This time, and in total illegality, Paris sent the detective Virginie Paulin’s personal account details with the Crédit Agricole bank (see document immediately below). Exactly why he did so is unclear, although it suggests that Fourès may have been expected to verify movements on her account.
Eight days later, on December 19th 2008, Paris sent an email to IKEA France managing director Jean-Louis Baillot, who closely followed the investigation into Paulin, and to then-human resources director Claire Hery, now the head of an Ikea store in Franconville, close to Paris.
“For Christmas!!” began the email from Paris, apparently highly pleased with himself. It contained a facsimile of a fax sent by Paulin to airline Royal Air Maroc, with copies of her passport pages stamped by Moroccan customs (see document immediately below). “Document signed by her hand with the customs’ stamp,” wrote Paris. “The fax is dated today so I think they have a contact with Air Maroc who asked for information. I don’t know if we can produce it, but in any case we know that on November 7th she was on the plane.”
Enlargement : Illustration 5
Hery immediately replied: “An irrefutable proof that she made two forgeries… for my attention. If they can do the same thing for the coming holidays that would be great!”
The following day, December 19th, it was Baillot’s turn to comment. In an email to Hery and Paris (see document immediately below) he wrote: “Excellent! We’ll all the same carry out the [sick leave] checks during the week after Christmas so as to catch her, should she provide us with another forgery.”
The astonishing exchange shows that the head of Ikea France was perfectly happy to have engaged in practices that constitute an illegal intrusion on a person’s private life, even encouraging the practice.
In fact, Paulin was never involved in providing forged documents.
Paulin discovered details of the surveillance from Mediapart, after we traced her to her home in western France. Learning for the first time about how Paris had obtained the faxed document with her stamped passport pages she expressed a moment of surprise, before recalling: “One day I received a call from Royal Air Maroc who proposed that I should take part in a small competition. I was told that if I faxed by ticket stubs along with my passports with the customs’ stamps, I would be one of five people in a draw to win a return-trip to Marrakech.”
'They told me I was dishonest, worthless'
Paulin sent the fax, but the intended trap fell partially flat. The customs’ stamps did not indicate the date of the outbound flight, which Ikea’s management had hoped would provide proof of her provision of false sick leave documents. Human resources director Hery realised this on December 23rd 2008. In an email sent that day to Paris and Baillot (see document immediately below), she wrote: “The Royal Air Maroc fax does not demonstrate that she gave me a forgery because it mentions the return date of November 7th …not the outbound trip…I had her checked on October 27th and 30th.” She then addresses Paris: “Jean-François, we need the same thing for the period covering October 27th and 30th … plus the list of all the tickets Virginie [Paulin] had with Royal Air Maroc to show her capability of travelling often. An attestation would be better than a fax.”
Enlargement : Illustration 8
Meanwhile, Hery also contacted by email a company called Synéance, which carries out checks on behalf of employers seeking to ensure that employees on sick leave respect the official certificate requirements. Jean-Louis Baillot and Jean-François Paris were CC-copied into her email to Synéance, (which vaunts itself as a company that can “make a climb in employees’ rate of presence”), and in which Hery requests it to check on Virginie Paulin on December 29th, 30th and 31st, and again on January 2nd.
Hery complained that ony two checks on Paulin were carried out during the traditional holiday period surrounding November1st All Saints Day. She also indicated that she would ask the Paris Tenon hospital for confirmation that Paulin appeared there for an appointment on October 30th 2008.
Paulin told Mediapart of her astonishment at discovering the covert operation by Ikea’s management. “I don’t understand what they were looking for,” she said. “I never hid [the existence of] my journeys. It would have sufficed for them to ask me.”
Paulin’s lawyer, Pascal Gastebois, said the Ikea management team “wanted to catch her by suggesting things, in order to fire her while dissuading her from going to an industrial tribunal”. On March 3rd 2009, while Paulin had received a new medical certificate that raised the possibility that she could return to work in September of that year, she was informed by Ikea that her employment contract had been terminated. The company justified her sacking because of “the necessity to go about her definitive replacement following her sick leave that had been prolonged since more than a year.”
Paulin, whose daughter was then aged three, protested the decision, after which Ikea invited her to a meeting “to find a solution”, in April 2009. “They challenged the reality of my illness, told me that I was dishonest, that I was worth nothing,” Paulin recalled of the discussion. She said she left “in a state of shock” and subsequently attempted suicide.
She has never since been able to return to a professional activity, and eventually sold her house in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, west of Paris, close to Ikea France’s headquarters.
On July 21st 2010, an industrial tribunal in Versailles found that Ikea’s decision to sack her was “devoid of real and serious reason”, and ordered the company to pay her 56,800 euros in compensation.
However the tribunal did not recognise that there had been moral harassment on the part of Ikea. That prompted a legal appeal lodged by Paulin, which in turn led Ikea to offer her a higher sum in compensation. She was about to accept the increased offer when Mediapart uncovered the details of the espionage operation mounted by the company against her.
Neither Jean-Louis Baillot nor Claire Hery returned Mediapart's calls inviting their comments.
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- This article can be read in French here.
English version: Graham Tearse