Bayer Hires Lawyers as Monsanto Spying Probe Widens

(Bloomberg) -- Bayer AG hired law firm Sidley Austin LLP to investigate a Monsanto surveillance project that first came to light in France and has now spread to encompass a half-dozen other European countries.

With the help of media company Fleishman-Hillard Group, Monsanto tracked journalists, politicians and others in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the U.K. as well as stakeholders connected to European Union institutions, Bayer said on Tuesday. The German company said it decided at the end of last week to stop working with Fleishman-Hillard in the areas of communications and public affairs.

Uproar over the tracking project is among the myriad challenges Bayer inherited from Monsanto, the U.S. agriculture company it bought last June for about $63 billion. It first emerged in France, where a Paris prosecutor opened a preliminary inquiry this month into the company’s alleged efforts to suppress criticism of its products. Meanwhile, Bayer has lost three consecutive U.S. court rulings over claims that Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup causes cancer and still faces thousands of similar lawsuits.

In Europe, Sidley Austin will review the names and data Monsanto collected and start informing individuals on the lists by the end of next week, Bayer said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Kresge in Berlin at nkresge@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, John Lauerman, Marthe Fourcade

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