STOCKHOLM // Swedish furniture giant Ikea used political prisoners in East Germany as forced labourers during the 1970s and 1980s, according to a Swedish investigative news programme.
A reporter for the show, Uppdrag Granskning, has found documents supporting the claim in former East German Stasi secret police files, according to a trailer for the show on Swedish public television SVT's website.
No other details were available. The programme is to be broadcast on Wednesday.
Ikea has already told Swedish news agency TT it was looking into the issue.
"We have requested documents from the old Stasi archives and are interviewing people at Ikea who were around back then," Ikea's social and environmental manager Jeanette Skjelmose told TT on Saturday.
"So far there are no indications that we would have asked that prisoners be used in manufacturing or known about it," she said.
"What we're looking into now is whether it could have happened anyway, without our knowledge," she said.
Ikea, an unlisted, family-owned company, is the world's largest furniture retailer, with sales of €25 billion (Dh121bn) in 2011 and 131,000 employees at the end of its last fiscal year in August 2011.
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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Winners
Ballon d’Or (Men’s)
Ousmane Dembélé (Paris Saint-Germain / France)
Ballon d’Or Féminin (Women’s)
Aitana Bonmatí (Barcelona / Spain)
Kopa Trophy (Best player under 21 – Men’s)
Lamine Yamal (Barcelona / Spain)
Best Young Women’s Player
Vicky López (Barcelona / Spain)
Yashin Trophy (Best Goalkeeper – Men’s)
Gianluigi Donnarumma (Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City / Italy)
Best Women’s Goalkeeper
Hannah Hampton (England / Aston Villa and Chelsea)
Men’s Coach of the Year
Luis Enrique (Paris Saint-Germain)
Women’s Coach of the Year
Sarina Wiegman (England)
The%20specs
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INDIA SQUAD
Rohit Sharma (captain), Shikhar Dhawan (vice-captain), KL Rahul, Suresh Raina, Manish Pandey, Dinesh Karthik (wicketkeeper), Deepak Hooda, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Vijay Shankar, Shardul Thakur, Jaydev Unadkat, Mohammad Siraj and Rishabh Pant (wicketkeeper)
Who was Alfred Nobel?
The Nobel Prize was created by wealthy Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel.
- In his will he dictated that the bulk of his estate should be used to fund "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind".
- Nobel is best known as the inventor of dynamite, but also wrote poetry and drama and could speak Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17. The five original prize categories reflect the interests closest to his heart.
- Nobel died in 1896 but it took until 1901, following a legal battle over his will, before the first prizes were awarded.
