British American Tobacco accused of bribing politicians, officials to bend anti-smoking laws

British American Tobacco (BAT), one of the UK’s biggest companies, is reported to have bribed senior politicians and government officials to subvert laws aimed at discouraging tobacco consumption.

Company insiders armed with court documents revealed details of BAT’s African operations to the BBC, reports the Independent.

“I was a commercial hit man,” Paul Hopkins told BBC One’s ‘Panorama’ programme.

Hopkins was with the Irish Special Forces before he took up the BAT assignment.

He said he broke laws and bribed officials while working for BAT in Kenya, a stint that lasted 13 years.

“It was explained to me in Africa that's the cost of doing business,” the Independent quoted him telling the BBC.

He said several people involved with the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) had been targeted.

“BAT is bribing people, and I'm facilitating it,” Hopkins had claimed. He is no longer a part of the tobacco giant.

UK laws make bribery by British companies in foreign countries a punishable offence, and anti-smoking campaigners are up in arms demanding criminal investigation into BAT’s activities.

Before leaving the company, Hopkins recorded conversations with his boss, Gary Fagan, BAT’s Director for East and Central Africa, and a company lawyer Naushad Ramoly, in which they, Hopkins claimed, discussed bribes.

“That’s what we are going to be paying. Yeah, ok, fine. Anything else that you think we’ll need to be paying for?” said the lawyer in the discussion held in 2013.

Ramoly, who no longer works for BAT, and Fagan deny wrongdoing.

“Two FCTC representatives, Godefroid Kamwenubusa, from Burundi, and Chaibou Bedja Abdou, from the Comoros Islands, were both allegedly paid $3,000 (£2,000), according to the Panorama investigation.

“And Bonaventure Nzeyimana, a former FCTC representative from Rwanda, was allegedly paid $20,000.

“All three deny accepting bribes. But in court documents, BAT describes the payments to the three as “unlawful bribes,” according to the BBC,” says the Independent.

Kenya’s former trade minister Moses Watangula, too, had allegedly been bribed.

Vera da Costa e Silva, head of the WHO FCTC secretariat, has accused BAT “using bribery to profit at the cost of people’s lives.”

And Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “Panorama’s shocking evidence must be investigated without delay.

A BAT spokesperson dismissed the allegations, saying in a statement they were from “former employees with a clear vendetta against us, whose employment was terminated in acrimonious circumstances and who present a completely false picture of the way BAT does business.”