According to information obtained by Yle, police suspect the owners of a popular ethnic restaurant chain of gross extortion of their foreign-background workers.
The owners are a couple who operate a chain of Caucasian-style restaurants — a female Finnish citizen and a naturalised Finnish male.
The eatery chain operates in Turku, Espoo, Helsinki and Tampere. The couple are also involved in operations of a number of other similarly styled restaurants around the country.
Between 2019 and 2025, regional authority AVI carried out several inspections of establishments in which the couple has been involved. The inspections revealed a number of shortcomings at several of the suspects' restaurants, including in Espoo, Tampere and Helsinki.
However, the police criminal probe only examined activities that took place at their restaurant in Turku in 2019-2022. That preliminary probe has ended and the case was sent to prosecutors for consideration of charges.
The suspects have denied the criminal allegations and other accusations of poor working conditions.
According to information obtained by Yle, the preliminary investigation involved interviews with four foreign-background employees. Three of them are from the same country as the male suspect. The police suspect that at least two of the workers were forced to return part of their pay to their employer.
According to some of the employees, the owners collected the cash payments from them once a month, leaving them with between 1,100 and 1,300 euros of their salary. However, other employees said they told police that they were not aware of such practices.
The owners have claimed that at first, they were helping employees send money to family members in their home countries. However Yle was unable to confirm whether any funds had reached the workers' families.
A Finnish citizen who had previously worked at the restaurant was interviewed by police as a witness in the preliminary investigation. That individual claimed that the foreign workers were treated differently than locals.
The foreign-background workers only began to understand their rights when they gradually learned English and received help from the restaurant's Finnish employees.
Two of the foreign workers have alleged that they were told the salary deductions were for things including loan repayments, apartment rents, as well as governmental fees. However, they did not know about the deductions until a Finnish worker explained what was going on.
Police also interviewed two former foreign-background employees of the restaurant. They said that there were no such shortcomings in the owners' operations, as others had claimed.
According to Yle's information, the police probe also heard about other allegations of mistreatment. They included accusations of longer-than-agreed working hours, unpaid overtime and irregular shift bonus payments.
One worker claimed to have been required to work without compensation, and was initially told to prepare food at night and was not allowed to be in the establishment during business hours.
Some of the foreign-background employees in Turku lived in shared accommodation, which was arranged by the owners. Some later moved into their own homes.
According to Yle's information, during the preliminary investigation one of the owners expressed surprise by the claims that the workers had returned some of their pay. The owner suggested that the workers may not have understood that, in Finland, taxes are automatically deducted from their salaries.
The lead investigator, Riikka Laaksonen, from the Southwestern Finland Police Department, made a brief statement about the case.
"There is reason to suspect that the restaurant owners took advantage of some of their employees' financial or other difficulties, dependent position, lack of understanding, or thoughtlessness in connection with the employment contract, and have thus obtained financial benefit for themselves that is clearly disproportionate to what they gave in return," Laaksonen told Yle.
After Yle made several attempts to reach the two suspects, the female suspect issued a brief reply. The woman noted that she could not comment on pending legal matters.
"At this point I will only state that our company takes the matter very seriously and has denied the allegations and demands made against our company and its executives as unfounded," the woman's message read.
The suspect said that she and the other owner are waiting for the prosecutor to decide not to pursue the case.