Inquiry shows no evidence backing Tesla's claim against German union

German state criminal police office investigations of allegations by US electric carmaker Tesla that the IG Metall union had conducted an illegal eavesdropping operation have produced no evidence, a public prosecutor's office said on Friday.

"The result of the examinations carried out there was that there were no indications of recorded and/or stored recordings on the notebook," the office in the state of Brandenburg said.

There was also "no data that could indicate that the microphone was switched on at the time of the alleged offence."

Tesla had filed a criminal complaint against an IG Metall union secretary, accusing him of secretly and unlawfully recording a works council meeting on February 10 with his laptop.

The public prosecutor's office opened an investigation on suspicion of violating the confidentiality of the spoken word and of breaching German labour law.

IG Metall then filed a criminal complaint against plant manager André Thierig on suspicion of malicious gossip, saying Tesla's accusations were baseless.

Union accuses Tesla of smear campaign

"With brazen accusations against an IG Metall colleague, Tesla managing director André Thierig triggered a smear campaign directly ahead of the works council election," said Jan Otto, district head of IG Metall.

"Now it is clear: all allegations were false. Here, a company management interfered in a works council election with false accusations."

IG Metall plans to challenge the works council election from early March and accuses Tesla of influencing the election campaign. It submitted an application to the Frankfurt an der Oder labour court.

Tesla said the non-union list Giga United won the works council election. The company, which is owned by US mutlibillionaire Elon Musk, said just under 11,000 employees work at its only car plant in Germany.