A French court is to rule Tuesday on claims Swedish furniture giant Ikea set up an elaborate system to illegally spy on hundreds of employees and job applicants from 2009 to 2012, using private detectives as well as police.
Prosecutors asked for a fine of two million euros ($2.4 million) to make an example of Ikea France and a three-year prison sentence for its former chief executive Jean-Louis Baillot, two of them suspended.
Baillot has denied any wrongdoing, pinning the blame on the group’s former head of risk management Jean-Francois Paris, who has admitted sending lists of names of people “to be tested” to a private security firm, Eirpace.
Fifteen people have been charged in the case alongside Ikea France, including former store managers, police officials and the head of Eirpace.
They largely refused any responsibility for the illicit surveillance during a two-week trial in March in the Paris suburb of Versailles.
But state prosecutor Pamela Tabardel said some 400 people had been illegally targeted by a programme of “mass surveillance,” and urged judges to send a “strong message”…
