A 44-year-old man was indicted on Thursday for selling thousands of liters of glyphosate to individuals on the internet, the Tours prosecutor's office announced.
The sale to individuals of this controversial pesticide has been banned in France since 2019, said in a press release the public prosecutor of this city, Grégoire Dulin.
Presenting himself as a sports coach, the man, domiciled in the Gard but usually residing in Thailand, will be tried on May 23 before the criminal court of Tours, indicates the magistrate.
He will have to answer for "
facts of placing plant protection products on the market that do not benefit from a marketing authorization
" as well as "deception on a product entailing a danger to the health of humans or animals. , says the magistrate.
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Investigations have established that, since January 2020, more than 30,000 liters of glyphosate representing a value of more than 592,000 euros “
had been sold to individuals, in particular in Indre-et-Loire, in Loiret and Loir-et -Cher, by various resellers via the internet without any information on the risks inherent in these products likely to be qualified as CMR (carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic) having been communicated to the buyers
”, indicates the magistrate.
170,000 euros in profit on 9,000 liters of glyphosate sold
"
After a lot of work, the investigators managed to identify one of the main retailers of these products on the national territory
", according to the press release.
For the man in question, "the amount of sales generated by this activity was estimated at nearly 170,000 euros, representing more than 9,000 liters of prohibited plant protection products", continues the text.
The man, with a clean criminal record, was placed in police custody earlier this week upon his return to France.
He has since been placed under judicial supervision pending trial.
He admitted his involvement in the alleged facts
,
"
admitting to buy from wholesalers domiciled in Spain these products which he knew were prohibited in France and then resell them to individuals with a margin of around 30%
", adds the magistrate.
Glyphosate is banned for sale to individuals but the authorization granted to farmers to use this pesticide runs until the end of the year and will probably be extended for another year.
President Emmanuel Macron had promised at the end of 2017 that glyphosate would be banned in France "
at the latest in three years
", before retracting.