Lawsuit against Bundesbank for access to information (Monsanto purchase) - (initiated in 2019)
The Bundesbank bought Bayer bonds with money from the European Central Bank, thereby the federal banc co-financed the purchase of the US seed company Monsanto. This deal was done as part of its Corporate Sector Purchase Program (CSPP), which, as it claims on its website, is intended to prevent deflation by issuing cheap money to companies. But to this day they have not revealed the reasons why the ECB and the Bundesbank bought Bayer bonds.
I had asked the ECB and the Bundesbank - the latter is responsible for the CSPP program in the German and Dutch economic areas - not only about the exact scope of the financial operation and about a possible conflict of interest because of BlackRock. The US asset manager carries out the stress tests of banks for the ECB and thus has sensitive data on its European competitors. I wanted to know from the Bundesbank a) the volume of the transaction, b) at what interest rate, and c) how the Bundesbank had measured the risk associated with the purchase of Monsanto (Due Diligence). However, the Bundesbank believes that the IFG, the German Freedom of Information Act, does not apply to them and has refused to provide any information. I have opened a lawsuit before the Frankfurt Administrative Court.and lost.
The appeal is ongoing, but the Frankfurt administrative judges are in no hurry. Are they hoping I'll give up? Or have to give up because I'm running out of money for this lawsuit? The fact is that I had a donations account with Comdirect bank to finance this and other lawsuits for access to information. Comdirectbank – as they say, on its own initiative – checked all account transactions for their contents – in other words, snooped around – and discovered that mostly small amounts were being deposited there to finance the lawsuits. Without further explanation, they closed my account. Comdirect is owned by Commerzbank, where the state still holds a significant stake – see de-banking or the Bundesbank's revenge? – and Jens Weidmann heads Commerzbank's supervisory board. He was supposed to become ECB chief, but that didn't happen, coincidentally after I published my research.