IKEA probes allegations over police files Swedish furniture giant IKEA said on Wednesday it was investigating allegations it had paid for illegal access to secret French police files on employees, clients and even people who came near its property. IKEA said it would investigate the allegations in French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine that the company used a private security firm to obtain illegally personal information, including about unhappy clients. Le Canard published what it said were email exchanges between the head of the company's risk management department, Jean-Francois Paris, and Yann Messian of Surete International about getting access to the police force's STIC files. The controversial STIC file system has been criticised for being an unreliable database of millions of names and personal information about crime perpetrators, victims and even witnesses. The newspaper said that Surete International offered access to the files for 80 euros (about $100) a time, as well as to a database of vehicle owners. The report quoted emails requesting information on employees, including union members, on the names associated with a list of mobile phone numbers and asking to know who were the owners of certain car registrations. IKEA France allegedly asked for police files on a customer who was suing the company for 4,000 euros and for the name of the owner of a car that approached the site of a future shop. We would like to shed all possible light on this situation. We have decided to undertake all the checks necessary to know what exactly happened," IKEA France's head of communications, Pierre Deyris, told AFP. Deyris stressed that this was not an admission that the charges were true. "We clearly and strenuously disapprove of all these illegal practices that can damage important values" such as "respect for privacy." At the company's headquarters in Sweden, spokeswoman Ylva Magnusson told AFP: "We are taking these accusations very seriously and we have launched an internal investigation to get to the bottom of what has happened, to determine if anything has happened, and what exactly has happened. "IKEA is a value-based company and that means that respecting people's privacy is extremely important, both when it comes to customers and colleagues," she said. A police source said: "Former police who have gone to work for private security firms can be tempted to use their network to obtain information unduly." Le Canard said that employees would lodge a formal complaint on Wednesday. However, one of the employees' lawyers, Yassine Yakouti, declined to say how many would complain or when. CFDT union representative Salvatore Rinaldo said: "We had our suspicions. "There was no proof, only someone who said that they had to put everything that employees did on a USB key," he said, adding that the employee in question "refused to get involved in the system and was fired." All this doesn't seem completely unfounded. But I'm waiting for the management to shed some light," said another union representative, requesting anonymity. The interior ministry said that it could not launch an internal investigation until a formal complaint had been lodged. "Once one or several complaints are lodged, the judicial investigation should determine if files such as those from the STIC, vehicle registration database or drivers licence database have been illicitly accessed," a ministry source said. "Consultations of different files are traceable (because an individual login is required) which will allow for a very clear vision of who has consulted what," the source said.