French retailer Auchan, which continued its business in Russia after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, unlike many other groups, “seems to be contributing to the Russian war effort,” he writes. The world on Friday, its management said it was “very surprised” by these allegations.
“We are very surprised,” the management of the group, owned by the Mulliez Family Association (AFM) based in northern France, reacted to AFP. “We are in the process of verifying the asserted elements, but, to date, the elements in our possession do not corroborate” the Mundo investigation, he continues.
According to documents obtained by the newspaper, the investigative site The Insider and the NGO Bellingcat, Auchan delivered free goods to Vladimir Putin’s army.
Cigarettes and pork stew
The investigation mentions in particular a cargo worth 2 million rubles (about 25,000 euros) that Auchan would have offered free of charge. According to Le Monde, a management controller, Natalya Z., drew up a list of equipment on March 15, 2022 in an email sent “to about twenty employees in various stores in Saint Petersburg, in western Russia, with the aim of ‘raising donations for humanitarian aid'”.
It included “thousands of cigarettes, size 43 or 44 wool stockings, gas stove cartridges, canned pork, axes and nails, all from the brand’s stock,” the newspaper continues.
The group’s management points out that “the only elements provided date from March 2022”, that is, a few weeks after the outbreak of the conflict, and that in this case “the interlocutors who placed an order were regular interlocutors, who had already made a order with us in advance”.
“We do not finance or participate voluntarily and actively in any collection destined for the Russian forces,” continues the address.
France’s fifth-largest grocery retailer in terms of market share (behind E.Leclerc, Carrefour, Intermarché and Système U) had a long-standing presence in the Ukraine and Russia, where before the war it accounted for one-tenth of your total sales. Another sign of the Mulliez galaxy, Leroy Merlin, is also very present there, to the point of dominating the DIY market in Russia.
When publishing its results for the first half of 2022, in August, Auchan indicated that it had registered a “sharp slowdown” in its commercial activity in Russia, ensuring that this activity is carried out there “in maximum autonomy and in strict compliance with the European embargo”. .
Source: BFM TV
