"Findus has been exposed buying illegally caught cod from a wholesaler and then selling it on into the market. This is completely unacceptable," Greenpeace oceans campaigner Ida Udovic told AFP.

About 15 activists gathered at the Findus Malmoe offices in southern Sweden on Thursday and three of them used a crane to hang a banner stating "Stolen Fish -- Empty Seas" across the facade of the building.

In a television documentary aired on Swedish TV4 late Wednesday, it was revealed that Findus had bought Barents Sea cod from ships fishing over their legal quotas.

"This constitutes a huge threat to the cod stocks, and that is very serious in the Barents Sea, which has the last healthy cod stock in the world," Udovic said.

Norway's ministry of fishery and coastal affairs has estimated that some 100,000 tonnes of cod and haddock are illegally caught in the Barents Sea each year.

"We're asking Findus to stop buying and selling illegally caught fish. ... There is plenty of legal cod out there. This is simply a question of will for Findus," Udovic insisted.

The Scandinavian company, which sells frozen foods across northern, eastern and central Europe, as well as in France and Thailand, insisted on Thursday that it was strongly opposed to illegal fishing.

"On such short notice we have not had time to check the veracity of the claims (in the documentary), but the accusations are so severe that we have to take the information very seriously," Findus quality director Inger Larsson said in a statement.

The company said it would request new guarantees from its wholesalers that all fish it receives was caught within the legal quotas.

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