The National Agency for Prevention of Corruption has added the French corporation Auchan to the list of international sponsors of war.
This was reported by the NAPC press service.
This corporation is currently represented in many countries and is one of the largest operators of retail chains, including the Auchan hypermarket chain.
The reason for the inclusion in the list of international sponsors of the war was that during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by russia, the company refused to stop financing the terrorist state and did not close its business in russia.
Background. Thanks to investigative journalism by The Insider, Le Monde and Bellingcat, it became known that from the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the russian subsidiary of the French Auchan supplied goods to the russian military in the occupied Ukrainian territories. The company supplied these goods under the guise of "humanitarian aid" and also helped with the implementation of mobilisation activities in the russian federation.
"In particular, Auchan is directly involved in supporting mobilisation in russia. Thus, the company collected and transmitted to the military enlistment office all the necessary information about its employees, after which they could be mobilised right from their workplace," the NAPC said in a statement.
For Auchan, russia is the second most important market after France. In 2020 alone, the russian Auchan paid $167 million to the russian budget. According to journalists, this is equal to the cost of 15 Su-25 aircraft, 42 tanks, 222 Kalibr missiles, or 477,000 AK-74 assault rifles.
"We cannot allow russia to continue to receive these funds, for which it then kills Ukrainians. We want any company to be ashamed of cooperating with murderers. The Institute of Reputation must work, so we have added Auchan to the list of international sponsors of the war," said NAPC Chairman Oleksandr Novikov.