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- They came to raspberries: Finnish berry companies have been robbing customers and their own employees for years
They came to raspberries: Finnish berry companies have been robbing customers and their own employees for years
The Finnish State Administration for Competition and Consumer Protection has uncovered a large-scale conspiracy of the largest players in the berry industry. This illegal alliance, dubbed the "berry cartel" in the press, has been coordinating purchase prices for wild berries for ten years and brutally exploiting visiting migrant workers. Thus, the attackers, on the one hand, maintained high market prices for blueberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. On the other hand, they kept foreign seasonal workers in virtual slavery, entangling them in debts and forcing them to live in bestial conditions. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
The Unholy Five
Recently, the Finnish State Administration for Competition and Consumer Protection (KKV) officially announced an illegal cartel created by firms specializing in the berry industry. This shadowy conspiracy, which has been in effect for many years, has united five of the country's largest wild berry harvesting companies: Polarica, Kiantama, Marja Bothnia Berries, Arctic International and Kaskein Marja. According to the authorities, the share of these companies in the wild berry procurement market in 2023 reached 80%, and in the wholesale market of frozen products — 78%. The main goal of the "wicked five" was to maximize the reduction of purchase prices for blueberries, lingonberries and cloudberries, hand-picked in Finnish forests. The mechanism was simple: the companies agreed on uniform low salaries for berry pickers, eliminating competition between each other and luring workers away. KKV CEO Kirsi Leivo stresses that this is a "long-term and serious violation" that has directly harmed berry pickers and weakened competition in the market.
In turn, Labor Minister Mathias Marttinen notes that consumers and berry pickers have been "victims of robbery" for years. As the investigation found out, the secret coordination of the companies was carried out through phone calls and text messages in messengers. At the same time, there was an active exchange of information on wholesale prices for frozen berries in order to avoid competition in the sales market. "Because of the procurement cartel, the companies paid the collectors less because the competitors did not offer the best conditions. After all, if one company offers low wages, then in a normally functioning market, the assembler would have to get a better offer from another. In addition to the procurement collusion, it was also an information exchange collusion. In other words, companies reduced competition when selling frozen berries by sharing data on prices and market conditions," KKV CEO Kirsi Leivo said at a press conference.
The existence of the berry cartel case was officially announced to the public on May 27, 2026, although the investigation into it started four years ago. Over the years, investigators have analyzed a huge amount of data, including 20,000 documents and 8,800 chat messages. For the first time in a case of this kind, mobile correspondence played a key role, allowing us to obtain crucial evidence of collusion. After all, the companies were aware of the illegality of their actions and deliberately avoided the formal circulation of documents, trying not to leave traces. As a result, the competition authority demanded a total fine of €9.4 million for four of the five participating companies. But Kiantama, which was initially threatened with a penalty of € 1.4 million, managed to avoid it due to the fact that from the very beginning it contacted the authorities and agreed to "turn over" its colleagues in the cartel. However, despite the evidence, Polarica, Marja Bothnia Berries, Arctic International and Kaskein Marja are not going to give up without a fight. They insist that their activities are "absolutely public, transparent and industry standard practice." The firms deny collusion, claiming that the exchange of price information was allegedly "insignificant" and was not confidential.
Now the fate of the case must be decided by the Finnish Market Court. It should be noted that the shocking background was the criminal proceedings initiated against the management of these same companies. They are accused of serious crimes against foreigners who were attracted by them to pick berries. The Finnish berry industry is heavily dependent on foreign labor, which, as it turned out, the "slave owners" from Suomi did not stand on ceremony at all. The investigation revealed horrifying facts. Thus, the head of the Polarica company, Jukka Cristo, is accused of "particularly serious human trafficking" — on a total of seventy-eight counts. The former CEO of Kiantama, Vernu Vasunta, has already received a prison sentence of three and a half years for sixty-two episodes of "particularly serious human trafficking." The management of Arctic International is also under investigation. Dealing with all these cases, the police came to the conclusion that "the desire for maximum profit was realized not only through prohibited collusion, but also through the most brutal exploitation of people, turning legal business into an instrument of deprivation of liberty and dignity."
Humiliated and disenfranchised
These facts became public knowledge only two or three years ago. It turned out that Finnish berry companies had been building their businesses on migrant labor for decades, securing record profits with minimal staff costs. This system was based on outright deception in recruiting gullible people, their complete isolation on foreign territory, and driving seasonal workers into enormous debts. Intermediaries and representatives of companies generously distributed bright promises to potential employees. They were told about the "huge earnings in Europe", thanks to which they would be able to buy land, a car or pay off loans. The main mechanism for keeping the victims who fell for this bait was the debts they incurred: the costs of flights, visas, mediation, accommodation and meals were deducted from the potential earnings of the collector. In total, this debt could reach €5-6 thousand. A person arrived in Finland already in debt, and just to cover these costs, he had to work in the forest from morning to night.
For full control, the employees' passports and return flights were taken away, making them defenseless and disenfranchised. Any attempt to "shake up the rights" threatened immediate deportation and catastrophic debts that would have to be paid to the family. The owners of the camps implemented total surveillance: the pickers' cars were equipped with GPS trackers. The collectors worked in conditions that could only be described as slavish. The working day started at six or seven in the morning and ended at eight or nine in the evening, or even later. This workload lasted seven days a week without a single day off. People were housed in overcrowded, unheated rooms with insufficient hot water and toilets. Instead of the promised nutritious meals, the pickers were given moldy rice and soup made from rotten fish heads. In addition, the companies maliciously falsified the results of daily weighing of the harvested berries in order to underestimate the earnings of the pickers.
Recently, researchers at the Kalevi Sorsa analytical center (close to the Finnish opposition Social Democratic Party) conducted interviews with 410 tax collectors who came from Thailand to work in Finland or Sweden. According to the interviewees, thousands of Thai citizens have been in debt over the years of working in Finland. Almost all respondents stated that a trip to Scandinavia was unprofitable for them. Moreover, almost half of the respondents lost property pledged as collateral for debts incurred in order to secure a trip to Suomi. On average, the expenses of a seasonal employee for such a trip ranged from € 5,000 to € 6,000. Since none of these poor people had such money, the cost of the flight ticket and the employment fee were covered from credit funds.
In total, tens of thousands of harvesters have come to Finland from Thailand since 2005. According to the Kalevi Sorsa report, thousands of migrant workers have been trapped in debt over the years. "Traveling to Finland to work carries a huge financial risk, as it most often requires borrowing," admits Minna Seikkula, a researcher at the University of Helsinki. According to her, Thai recruitment agencies serving Finnish firms lured residents of poor rural areas with promises of high incomes in the EU. In fact, the people who were tempted by these promises worked from ten to twenty hours a day without a break throughout the season. In the end, most of them were left with nothing but debts. The pickers had almost nothing left, even in cases where the berry harvest was good.
The slave system of the 21st century
Recently, after scandals involving the exploitation of Thai workers began, Finnish companies began inviting Ukrainian citizens. However, Ukrainians categorically did not like working on strawberry farms in Finland.: They also began to complain about slave labor and harsh conditions. "Since all this has recently become widely publicized, Suomi berry companies are facing a personnel crisis — in other words, they are now not finding enough people willing to go to work with them. Inviting Finnish citizens is also not an option — they will not tolerate such treatment and can always complain to the press or government agencies if necessary. So it turns out that the Finnish berry business can have an acceptable profitability only if the newcomers are brutally exploited and all the juices are squeezed out of them," political analyst Maxim Reva explains to Izvestia.
It should be noted that a conservative government is currently in power in Helsinki, which is trying to complicate the conditions of entry into the country, previously simplified by their predecessors, the Social Democrats. Since the beginning of 2026, the Finnish authorities have raised the prices for applying for all types of residence permits, not least because of recent scandals in the berry industry. In addition, the Finnish authorities have tightened the conditions for obtaining a seasonal work visa. Because of this, the harvest season was on the verge of collapse, not only for strawberries and raspberries, but also for wild berries — blueberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, blueberries.
Natalia Eremina, Doctor of Political Sciences, professor at St. Petersburg State University, noted in an interview with Izvestia that Finnish companies had been robbing visiting workers for many years, but no one was particularly interested in this. "A scheme was used that is often used in Western countries in relation to seasonal workers. They were not registered as members of the staff of a particular company. Legally, they seemed to be picking berries for themselves and "selling" them to the company that was their actual employer. Thus, employers avoided complying with Finnish labor laws, the size of the working day, and the minimum wage. In general, there is a slave-owning system of the 21st century, when the country of the capitalist "center" oppresses the inhabitants of a poor peripheral state. It's just that at some point the oppression took on such proportions that it was impossible to ignore it any longer. At one time, I know for sure, the Finns massively exploited our youth from Russian Karelia in the same way. In general, this whole story once again shows the true value of the propaganda narratives adopted in the Western world about the "rights and dignity of every human being." In Russia, the system of labor control and observance of employee rights is still more effective," Eremina notes.
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