British tobacco company British American Tobacco (BAT) is suspected of having made hundreds of “Questionable payments” in ten African countries, for five years, in order to influence health policies and harm its competitors.
In a report published Tuesday, September 14, the NGO Stop accuses the global tobacco giant of having distributed more than 600,000 dollars (about 510,000 euros) in the form of money, cars or campaign donations to dozens. politicians, legislators, civil servants, journalists and employees of competing companies between 2008 and 2013.
The anti-tobacco NGO, launched in 2018 by billionaire and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, intends to denounce “The deceptive strategies of the tobacco industry” and propose ” ways “ to fight against its influence. This organization is collectively led by the University of Bath (UK), the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (Thailand) and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (Paris).
According to the NGO, the BAT group behaved “As if he were above the law”, based in particular on testimonies of whistleblowers, leaked documents and court cases analyzed by the research group Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG), University of Bath.
Bribes in Zimbabwe
“The potential corrupt practices of the BAT group in Africa were not only the work of a few bad apples”, said in a statement Andrew Rowell of the TCRG Group: “The geographical dispersion of this activity, the infrastructures used and the number of senior employees involved suggest that the payments made by BAT were routine. “
The members of the research group thus identified 236 “Questionable payments” carried out in Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia for a total of $ 601,502.
In a separate investigation released Monday, conducted by the BBC and a consortium of journalists, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the group is also accused of negotiating the payment of up to $ 500,000 in bribes to the party in power in Zimbabwe under the presidency of former President Robert Mugabe in 2013.
In a statement, the tobacco company, which operates in more than 170 countries, rejected “Categorically” what he called “Wrong description” of its activities. “Charges of this nature are not new and have been widely covered by various news media for several years”he said, adding that an investigation carried out in January by British anti-fraud authorities had cleared him of any wrongdoing.
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