More than 70 civil parties, around thirty lawyers, sixteen defendants including thirteen men, two women and a legal person, three judges as well as an additional assessor to deal with any eventuality: the Ikea trial opened on Monday, March 22 in the morning before the criminal court of Versailles.
For two weeks, the company Ikea France, (ex-) managers, collaborators, private investigators, police officers appear in court for having participated in what is described by the civil parties as a
"generalized spy system".
Read also: Suspected of having "fled" employees and customers, Ikea facing justice
At the heart of this
"quasi-industrial coping",
to use the expression of Me David Verdier, a lawyer with forty employees, are Jean-François P. and Jean-Pierre F .. Director of risk management at Ikea France in 2012, the first admitted during the survey to have requested personal information on employees, job applicants or clients from the second, a private investigator.
Jean-François P. also assured that this practice had been
"put in place"
and was perfectly
"endorsed"
by the management of the company.
Were police files used?
Questioned during this first day of hearing, Jean-François P. again admitted the facts.
“I worked with Jean-Pierre F. from 2002. He did not explicitly tell me where he got his information from, but I understood that it came from a Stic file (the old computerized police file, Editor's note), ”
said the fifty-year-old, conceding that he knew perfectly well that these steps were illegal.
The defendant explained that he received the answers from the private investigator at his home, by phone or by email.
He also deleted some of those emails.
"There was no logic of conservation"
, he insisted on clarifying.
Read also: Employees spied on: the Ikea case is far from the only one ...
When he in turn was questioned by the court, Jean-Pierre F. denied having contacted the police or gendarmes to obtain information.
“Jean-François P. was convinced that our information was extracted from police files, this was not the case.
We forbade ourselves to solicit civil servants, ”
declared the septuagenarian.
Swaying between the president's insistent questions, Jean-Pierre F. affirmed that his company had widely used the Internet, which was in full development in the early 2000s, and in general
"demonstrated imagination and ingenuity"
- this which elicited little laughs from the civil parties.
Disclaimers
The managers of the company at the time - Darius R., financial director, Jean-Louis B., managing director until the end of 2009 and Stefan V., his successor until 2015 - have for their part always disputed having been aware of these practices.
They will be heard on this subject in the coming days.
As for the other implicated Ikea collaborators, they essentially pleaded ignorance and tried to put the blame on other shoulders.
Sylvie W., Jean-François P.'s assistant to the risk management department, thus affirmed that the
"notions of criminal record searches"
were
"not her domain"
, and recalled that she was under the
“full and entire responsibility”
of Jean-François P.
Read also: Ikea would have spied on its employees and customers
Richard J., director of the Reims store, for his part indicated that he had only accepted a proposal made by Sylvie W. to conduct research on the employees and future employees of the structure.
Finally, Clarel L., responsible for the security of this store, who was responsible for sending two lists of names to headquarters, said he believed it was
"a routine procedure during openings. ".
"I complied, I did not ask myself any questions, I trusted my manager and Ikea,"
insisted Clarel L. In 2012, when the scandal erupted, Ikea issued a public apology and launched "a massive action plan ”, underlined before the hearing the lawyer of the company in
Figaro
.
