A 44-year-old Gardois was indicted for having illegally sold thousands of liters of glyphosate on the internet; The controversial pesticide is banned for sale in France for individuals. He faces 7 years in prison and a fine of 750,000 euros.
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. He should answer for “acts of placing plant protection products on the market that do not benefit from a marketing authorization” as well as “deception on goods entailing a danger to human or animal health”.
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, 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) has been communicated to buyers”.
“After a lot of work, the investigators managed to identify one of the main retailers of these products on the national territory”. 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”.
The man, with a clean criminal record, was placed in police custody earlier this week upon his return to France. He recognized “his involvement in the alleged acts”admitting “buying from wholesalers domiciled in Spain these products which he knew were prohibited in France and then reselling them to individuals with a margin of around 30%”.
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 promised at the end of 2017 that glyphosate would be banned in France “at the latest in three years”, before retracting.
Placed under judicial control, the retailer must pay a deposit of 20 000 euros before January 15. He faces a maximum sentence of 7 years in prison, and a fine of 750 000 euros.
With AFP