A Turkish mediator for a Swedish manager from the IKEA furniture chain in Russia faces five years prison after a Moscow court convicted him of large-scale extortion, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.
Turkish citizen Okan Yunalan helped Carl Ola, head of the leasing department in IKEA’s Russian subsidiary, to extort 6.5 million rubles ($197,090) from a Russian businessman who wanted to rent out part of a shopping mall near Moscow controlled by the Swedish company, the world’s largest home furnishing products seller.
Yunalan was arrested red-handed in April 2011 when he received the money from the businessman in a Moscow city cafe.
“According to the verdict, [Yunalan] will serve his sentence in a penal colony,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Ola remains on a federal wanted list.
The Interior Ministry had initially said Yunalan was a Swedish IKEA manager, before issuing a statement later to correct the information.