The French company Auchan supplied goods to the Russian army in the occupied Ukrainian territories for free. The documents were obtained by investigators from Bellingat, The Insider, and Le Monde.
The supplies to the occupiers were positioned as humanitarian aid. It consisted of products from store warehouses and goods collected by volunteers in supermarkets. In some regions, supplies were organized in cooperation with the authorities. In addition, Auchan helped military enlistment offices to recruit conscripts from among its employees.
In March 2022, Auchan refused to leave the Russian market in order not to "abandon employees, their families and customers." In a press release published a few days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speech in which he asked French companies to leave the Russian market, Auchan claimed that it meets "basic food needs." According to documents obtained by investigators, the retailer owned by the Mouliès family, the eighth richest French fortune according to Challenges, appears to be involved in Russia's military operations.
On 15 March 2022, Nataliya Z., a management controller at Auchan, sent an email to about twenty employees of several stores in St. Petersburg to "collect donations for humanitarian aid." The employees provided a list in an Excel spreadsheet: thousands of cigarettes, size 43 or 44 wool socks, gas stove canisters, canned pork stew, axes and nails-all from the warehouse. The shipment, worth 2 million rubles (about 25 thousand euros), had to be collected from five outlets and transported to a sixth store located near the city's historic centre. "Auchan provided everything for free," says an employee who participated in the gathering.
An employee of one of the St. Petersburg supermarkets interviewed by the journalists said that his colleague said in March that this "humanitarian aid" would be used for a so-called special military operation. The investigators contacted the heads of 10 companies that were registered recipients of humanitarian aid. Sergey Poma, director of MTK LLC, and Galina Baranova, director of Energia-300 LLC, admitted that the goods were sent to the Russian military. Some of them claimed that the goods were supposedly intended for their employees. When asked why the employees needed 700 lighters, the head of Venta LLC, Tatyana Nekrasova, said they were afraid of "Ukrainian subversions" and power outages. She stated that the lighters were needed to heat the stoves.
The companies selected to legalize supplies to the military are interconnected-they serve St. Petersburg's Passazhyrvatotrans, owned by the city's Transportation Committee.
However, Auchan used not only stores from St. Petersburg for deliveries. Other cities had collection points for "humanitarian aid for Donbas" in the supermarkets, too.
The investigators noted that humanitarian aid is only that provided to civilians, not the military. Supporting one of the warring parties can lead to sanctions.
However, not only Auchan but also Leroy Merlin, which belongs to the same holding, supplied goods to the occupied territories.
Auchan's management denies helping the occupiers.
In March, in response to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's call, Auchan Retail International CEO Yves Claude explained that the most important thing for the company is "to keep our employees and ensure that we fulfil our core mission of continuing to feed the people of these two countries (Russia and Ukraine - ed.)." He pointed out that the company operates 231 physical stores and an online platform in Russia, and 43 stores in Ukraine.
According to Politico, as of January 2023, only about 8% of European companies have left the Russian market.