IKEA's Romanian furniture deals secretly paid the Securitate, declassified files revealed

Declassified files from Romania's Securitate archives revealed that IKEA's furniture contracts with state-owned Tehnoforestexport in the 1980s included a covert scheme to funnel payments to Ceaușescu's secret police. The operation was codenamed Scandinavica and used a Securitate front company, ICE Dunarea, to skim money through overbilling.

The contracts were worth about £10 million per year by the mid-1980s. A Securitate note recorded the transfer of 163,005 Swedish crowns into a Securitate-controlled transitory account from a contract valued at 97 million Swedish crowns ($13.6 million). The Securitate collected a 1.85% commission on the overbilling and earned $41,283 in interest over six months from delaying repayment of the overpayments.

IKEA denied knowingly paying the Securitate, saying its only business partner was Tehnoforestexport and that commission structures were normal for the region at the time. It launched an internal investigation. The documents were discovered in 2014 at the National College for Studying the Securitate Archives in Bucharest.