The Guardian: Ikea collaborated with Ceausescu’s secret police

Newsroom 05/07/2014 | 16:29

In a special feature published on Friday on The Guardian’s web page, the British newspaper goes into details about Swedish furniture retailer Ikea’s dealings with Securitate, the secret police active during Ceausescu’s dictatorship in Romania.

Under the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (above), the Securitate police agency was tasked with securing foreign money to reduce national debt, the Guardian writes. Recently declassified files in Bucharest indicate that the furniture firm agreed to be overcharged for products made in Romania. Some of the overpayments were deposited in an account controlled by the Securitate, the secret police agency.

Romania’s brutal communist-era secret police received covert six-figure payments from Ikea as part of the Swedish group’s deals with a local furniture manufacturer in the 1980s, Thenoforestexport, according to documents obtained by the Guardian.

Ikea denies complicity, but has launched an internal investigation into the matter. It says it was unaware of the Securitate’s involvement in its commercial operations.

This is not the first time that Ikea’s brand is dragged into a scandal. Last year, the CEO of Ikea in France and two other top executives were charged on Tuesday in connection with suspicions the French branch of the Swedish home furnishings giant illegally used police files to spy on staff and customers.

In 2012, head of Ikea Germany, Peter Bezel, apologised in public for his company using prison labour in the 70’s and 80’s, when East German political prisoners were put to work building products for the Swedish company.

“We regret wholeheartedly that this happened,” said Betzel, head of Ikea Germany, after an independent report by auditors Ernst and Young confirmed that Ikea managers knew of the practice.

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