After eight years of investigation carried out by three successive investigating judges, IKEA France has been ordered to stand trial in its capacity as a corporate body over claims that it spied on customers, staff and trade unionists.
The French arm of the Swedish furniture retail giant faces charges of “the habitual receipt of information obtained via the offence of collecting personal data in a file by fraudulent, dishonest or unlawful means”, the “habitual receipt of information obtained via the offence of the misuse of personal data”, the “habitual receipt of information obtained via the offence of the deliberate, illegal disclosure of damaging personal data” and finally the “receipt of information obtained via the offence of breaching professional secrecy”.
In addition to the company itself, fifteen people have also been ordered to stand trial at the criminal court in Versailles, including Jean-Louis Baillot and Stefan Vanoverbeke, former chief executives of IKEA France, several senior group executives or store directors, and five current or former police officers.
According to the final report ordering the defendants to stand trial, which was signed on April 30th by investigating judge Laurence Joulin and a copy of which Mediapart has seen, IKEA France had set up a widespread system of spying on trade unionists, employees, job applicants and even just clients who had dared to complain. The system is said to have been brought in at the start of the 2000s, officially to combat theft and embezzlement.
IKEA France paid private detectives to obtain, quite illegally, confidential information about people, such as details from the well-known STIC police files in France, which are in any case rife with errors.
In most cases police officers were discreetly paid to look at the STIC file and then either inform the store concerned or the private detective firm who acted as intermediary. One police station was given furniture by IKEA and, in order to maintain good relations, some police officers were given store vouchers. Other details were uncovered by the investigation but because of the lapse of time and the statute on limitations only alleged offences that took place between 2009 and 2012 have been the subject of criminal proceedings.
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The truth was unearthed at the start of 2012 by Adel Amara, a representative of the Force Ouvrière (FO) trade union, whom management saw as an agitator. At the time he was working at the IKEA store at Franconville, a north-west Paris suburb, and had started a national strike in the group's French outlets to get a pay rise for staff. Now regarded as a major source of trouble, the trade unionist was quickly accused by his managers of “psychological bullying” and then sacked.
But thanks to a fellow union member on the staff Adel Amara got his hands on a computer file which showed the presence of widespread spying inside IKEA stores. The group's thirst for information was seemingly insatiable: it wanted to known about the lifestyle of some employees, details of their lives during their sick leave, and whether they had a criminal record. Adel Amar himself was among the targets of this covert spying. In 2012 an internal audit in IKEA France recommended the “implementation of a complete and discreet investigation into AA in order to determine his means of living and any trafficking or violence he perhaps engages in”.
Adel Amara and the FO trade union reported the issue to the legal authorities at the start of 2012 and the affair was revealed by the investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaîné and Mediapart. The arrest of individuals and searches followed. Under questioning the head of IKEA France security refused to take the blame and passed the buck on to the group's management. A number of documents disappeared and IKEA France and its executives denied any responsibility for the acts of spying, which they suggested were isolated incidents. But the investigation undermined their claims and most of the senior French management were placed under formal investigation, one step short of charges being brought.
In Judge Laurence Joulin's report, which formally charges the individuals and corporation and orders them to stand trial, it states: “Numerous testimonies from IKEA France employees tend to show that [the company] had in its possession personal processed data and used it in order to not employ or to no longer employ a certain number of victims. It clearly did not inform the persons concerned of the use made of their personal data, so they had therefore not given their consent.”
It continues: “IKEA France was thus perfectly aware of the unlawful nature of such gathering [of information] which was obtained illegally over the years, involving actions which acquired a certain systematic quality inside the company, notably during the opening of stores, and which persisted in many of the firm's stores well beyond persons who held management or risk management posts.”
Indeed, the judges' report states that this form of policing of staff and others was institutionalised in the company. “The [company] SAS Meubles IKEA France benefited, and in an habitual manner, from misuse of the personal information in order to implement a management policy based on a system of organised spying on job candidates, colleagues and customers,” it states. “It was aware of the unlawful nature of the actions used to obtain such information.”
It goes on to say: “The benefit for SAS Meubles IKEA France that stemmed from the habitual unlawful disclosure of personal information came from the chance to implement a system of spying while being perfectly aware of the fraudulent nature of the process used. That allowed it to adapt its hiring according to criteria to which it could not, in principle, have access, while knowing that the obtaining of this information was based on prohibited practices. To do this it had communicated personal information about persons who were potential recruits.”
Lawyer Sofiane Hakiki, who represents Adel Amara and the FO and CGT trade unions, told Mediapart he was “very keen on the idea of seeing those responsible for this sophisticated spying system being made accountable. We hope that the punishments are exemplary, both in relation to Ikea as a company and the persons who ran this spying system.”
IKEA France's lawyer Emmanuel Daoud told Mediapart that “since the revelation of these occurrences, IKEA has condemned the improper gathering of personal data. IKEA has worked actively to reveal the truth and will do so in the future in the courtroom, while respecting the presumption of innocence for everyone. I note that the investigating magistrate highlighted the fact that IKEA had immediately implemented a plan of action, and it will be shown before the court that there was no spying system.”
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The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter