Le Monde newspaper reported that the Russian branch of France's largest food supply company Sodexo served in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline near the city of Kingisepp in the Leningrad region, 30 km from the Estonian border.
The French company never made this contract public and kept the business private until it withdrew from Russia in 2022. Now an official partner of the Paris Olympic Games, Sodexo claims it has not violated any orders What punishment?
Sodexo's contract in Russia with the Russian oil and gas corporation Gazprom is the most profitable and "secret" contract - one of Sodexo's former Russian managers told Le Monde newspaper.
According to company documents cited by Le Monde, Sodexo is in charge of providing catering services and infrastructure such as generators and water treatment at the construction site of Gazprom's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Nord Stream 2 is a gas pipeline running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. Construction of Nord Stream 2 took place from early 2018 to September 2021. Initially, the operation of this gas pipeline was delayed amid rising tensions on the Russia-Ukraine border, then canceled completely abandoned due to Russia's military campaign in Ukraine. In September 2022, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 in the Baltic Sea exploded after a sabotage.
Le Monde newspaper said that in 2017, Sodexo representative office in Russia, Sodexo EuroAsia, won a contract worth millions of dollars to provide services for Nord Stream 2 construction.
Some Sodexo EuroAsia employees said that, although the contract was legally signed, the French company did not want to publicly announce this project due to image risks. “We don't want to be accused of collaborating with a country that is under sanctions,” Le Monde's source explained.
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on Gazprom Neft, Nord Stream's main shareholder.
According to a former employee, instead of working directly with Nord Stream AG - the company in charge of Nord Stream 2, Sodexo signed a contract with one of the Russian subcontractors, STEP in St. Petersburg, a company specializing in industrial construction.
After Russia began its military campaign in Ukraine in February 2022, Sodexo, like most Western companies, announced its withdrawal from Russia.
Sodexo's branch operating in the Russian market since 1993 has recruited about 4,500 employees. Le Monde newspaper pointed out that in April 2022, the ownership and management of Sodexo's assets were transferred to the local board of directors for a "symbolic price of 1 ruble".
Since 2018, the Russian branch of Sodexo is headed by Andrey Zhavoronkov, a former employee of the Finnish textile company Lindström.
However, in 2019 information emerged that Zhavoronkov's father was a high-ranking KGB officer, and that Zhavoronkov himself hid from the company his cooperation with Russian intelligence from the mid-1990s to the early the 2000s.
The Tonarm company founded by Zhavoronkov in 1996 provided services to the FSB. Another company, RCSI FORT, founded in 2004, is responsible for computer security of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Two former Russian managers of Sodexo said that a confidential report on this data was passed back to the group's headquarters in Paris in 2019, but no action was taken.
Sodexo's media representative told Le Monde they knew nothing about these "connections" and could neither confirm nor deny whether they had received documents containing such information five years ago. .
