Ukraine blacklists food giant Mondelez, which owns brands such as Marabou, O’boy and Daim. Authorities in Ukraine believe that the company contributes to Russia’s war coffers.
– There are probably many Swedish consumers who feel that they cannot buy Marabou on Friday evening now, says Torbjörn Becker at the School of Economics.
Jakob Hedenskog, analyst at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the Foreign Policy Institute, writes in a text message to TT that Ukraine wants to make the outside world aware that the company has not left Russia.
Funds Russian war chest
“They have three factories there and through manufacturing in Russia contribute to paying taxes to the Russian treasury. Since Russia is a war economy, the money goes one way or another to finance Russia’s warfare in Ukraine with the ultimate goal of wiping out Ukraine as a state and nation,” he writes.
In its annual report for 2022, Mondelez writes that the Russian operations account for 4 percent of total turnover. Since the company had a turnover of 31.5 billion dollars last year, this means sales in the Russian operations of around 13 billion kroner.
“Biscuits part of the standard diet”
In an interview with Yahoo Finance from last autumn, the company’s CEO Dirk Van de Put says that the company decided not to make a hasty retreat in Russia, but to “not in any way contribute to the war”.
– We sell chocolate and biscuits. In many countries, biscuits are part of the standard diet. Something you eat for breakfast. And therefore we believe that we provide products for ordinary Russians, he says in the interview.
According to Van de Put, at that time the company had 3,000 employees in Russia and over 30,000 suppliers.