World leading designer and seller of ready-to-assemble furniture IKEA AB has been slapped with a fine of $1.21 million (1 million euros) after it was found guilty of spying on its France based employees.
The case was being heard on a French court which established that IKEA was guilty of gathering and storing data on its employees illegally. The company has been reviewing bank details of the employees and even at times coming up with fake employees to write up reports on the employees.
According to the ruling, IKEA has been doing this for some years now which amount to direct violation and breaching of the employees’ privacy.
Prosecutors were advocating for the company to pay a fine of 2 million euro but only half of this was granted. Following the outcome, IKEA says that it will review court’s judgment and to establish if further measures are required to stop the unfortunate event from repeating itself in the future.
“IKEA Retail France has strongly condemned the practices, apologised and implemented a major action plan to prevent this from happening again,” said the company.
