Attorney General Bob Ferguson of Washington State “will seek damages running in the millions of dollars over [alleged] money laundering” in the 2013 referendum on labeling GMO foods, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The trial was to begin on Monday. Last month, a state judge ruled that the Grocery Manufacturers Association violated public disclosure laws by concealing the names of corporate donors who contributed $14 million to a “defense of brands” fund to defeat the referendum, which lost by 2.2 percentage points. GMA donated $11 million of the money to the “No on 522” campaign.
By law, the penalty for violating campaign finance disclosure laws can be as large as the amount that was not reported, and if the violation was intentional the penalty can be tripled to include punitive damages. GMA has said it always intended to comply with state law.
Ferguson “has seemed to relish the upcoming legal showdown,” said the Post-Intelligencer. GMA hired the law firm K&L Gates to present it. “Before he went into politics, Ferguson was a lawyer at K&L Gates.”
The nation’s first mandatory GMO labeling law takes effect July 1 in Vermont with a six-month grace period. The state attorney general’s office says it will focus on willful violations of the law. “Thus, after Jan. 1, 2017, we do not expect to bring enforcement cases based solely on a company’s failure to remove improperly labeled products that were distributed before July 1, 2016,” says a memo on enforcement priorities written earlier this year.