More details of IKEA’s slave labor deal with Cuba emerge from STASI documents

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More damning details are emerging from the East German STASI records documenting the deals made between Swedish furniture giant IKEA and the Castro dictatorship in Cuba. Apparently, in addition to contracting with the dictatorship for slave labor, IKEA was also looking to cash in on Cuba’s historical patrimony, which the Cuban regime stole from private citizens after taking power in 1959.

Juan Tamayo in the Miami Herald:

STASI records show Cuba deal included IKEA furniture, antiques, rum and guns

The controversial contract to use Cuban prison labor to build IKEA furniture was part of a broader deal between firms run by the Cuban and East German security services that also involved Cuban antiques, cigars and guns, according to a researcher in Berlin.

Documents on the deal, found in the archives of East Germany’s notorious STASI security agency, also refer to Cuban prison labor and indicate that former Cuban leader Fidel Castro personally approved the overall deal, said researcher Jorge Luis García.

Garcia told El Nuevo Herald on Wednesday he published an article about the deal in 2006 that mentioned the Cuban manufacture of furniture “for export to Sweden,” and posted a note about it in his blog, STASI-MININT Connection, early last year.

But the deal blossomed into scandal last week after a German newspaper reported that an IKEA subsidiary in Berlin and an East German company had contracted for Cuban prison labor to build 45,000 tables and 4,000 sofa groupings in 1987.

Continue reading HERE.

In a report from Penúltimos Días, one of the documents detailing the deal between IKEA and the Castro regime is shown, which contains the names of the Cuban officials who authorized the use of Cuban prisoners as slave labor to manufacture furniture for IKEA. As PD correctly states, the names and the evidence provided by these documents will come in handy for any lawsuits the surviving victims of this contracted enslavement may want to file against the Castro dictatorship.

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6 thoughts on “More details of IKEA’s slave labor deal with Cuba emerge from STASI documents”

  1. So you people never heard of “Arbeit macht frei”? Remember, Fidel was an avid reader of “Mein Kampf.”

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