On behalf of Bayer, US lawyers have put controversial lists of critics to the test and found no evidence of illegal behavior. These are lists of the US seed company Monsanto, which had been taken over by Bayer.
They date from 2016 and 2017 when Monsanto was in favor of further approval of the weed killer glyphosate in the EU. The existence of the documents became known in May of this year. In France, authorities suspected the company of illegally collecting private data.
The report now presented states: "We have found no evidence to support the allegations of the French media that the stakeholder lists were illegal." There is also no evidence that the lists were based on illegal "monitoring of persons, as claimed by the media". Rather, the contents of the lists came "mainly" from publicly available information such as press articles or from social media.
According to the information, 1475 people were on the lists, 466 from France and 202 from Germany. Among them were supporters, but also critics of glyphosate, such as politics and journalism. Bayer had apologized for the "completely inappropriate" practice.