Last week a BBC investigation exposed evidence of bribery at British American Tobacco. According to the report, BAT had illegally paid politicians and civil servants in several countries in East Africa. The payments were revealed when a whistle blower shared hundreds of secret documents.
SEATCA issued a statement calling on countries where BAT is operating, to be investigated by local anti-corruption authorities. This is necessary because tobacco companies apply pressure on governments and undermine any effort to strengthen tobacco control as revealed in the 2014 and 2015 Tobacco Interference Index.
Internal documents of the top tobacco companies that have been made public can provide valuable information for investigations in Asia to commence. Researchers who have reviewed thousands of internal documents of BAT’s activities in South East Asia provide important references and starting points for investigations.
A research paper published in Tobacco Control on Cambodia by Mackenzie et al,lays out how BAT strengthened its business: ‘“Almost a role model of what we would like to do everywhere”: British American Tobacco in Cambodia’. BAT identified several ASEAN countries, namely Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, as priority countries in the 1990s, and key entry criteria included identifying consultants enjoying “good connections with the leading industry and political figures in the country who could provide insights into likely developments” affecting foreign investment.
In 1991, an executive from BAT’s Singapore Tobacco Company (STC) visited Cambodia and met with the US Special Representative to Supreme National Council of Cambodia, Charles H Twining Jr, and with British Ambassador David Burns. They were reportedly “in accord in stressing that the West sees Cambodia as somewhat of a test case or demonstration of President Bush’s new world order”, with Burns providing assurances of his “willingness to give us whatever support he might be able in meeting the right people.”
In Malaysia, in return for a Commonwealth Games sponsorship deal, the Malaysian government agreed to “a freeze on government imposed excise over a similar period of five years.” BAT’s internal documents[1] reveal how BAT and other tobacco companies sponsored the 1998 Games through the Malaysian National Sports Council (NSC), contrary to the Commonwealth Games constitution that has a tobacco-free policy, and how the payments would be made without evoking public attention and be more of a “silent understanding” as proposed by the Minister of Primary Industries.
In internal BAT communications parent company BAT informed its local subsidiary, Malaysian Tobacco Company, it would sponsor the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Malaysia: “The industry will channel funds through the National Sports Council (an existing organization) and not directly to the Commonwealth Games Foundation. NSC will write to the tobacco companies inviting financial contributions. Effectively, the Industry will be allowed to ‘sponsor’ the aims and work of the NSC and the Industry will seek limited publicity so that contributions can be managed as a brand operating expense, thus avoiding the need for specific disclosure in annual reports. […]The Industry is proposing to contribute RM250 mns [approximately £66 million at current exchange rates] over a five year period, beginning January 1994.”
In the Philippines, a 1962 Philip Morris document noted that key political figures might be paid off in order to release tobacco being withheld from sale: “Two parties approached me yesterday and informed me that for P6M or P1 per lb. they could induce Senators and perhaps the President to release the tobacco”. Anotherinternal PMI correspondence from 1963 noted that “[c]orruption, bribery, smuggling and dirty politics are worse than anywhere else and continues for the benefit of officials who want to get rich quick”. Researchers who reviewed internal documents on the Philippines published a paper, ‘The Philippine tobacco industry: “the strongest tobacco lobby in Asia”’.
Though some of these internal documents are dated, they reveal the modus operandi of the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry has not changed. It is still aggressively selling a product that kills half its users prematurely.
For information on TI denormalization, check out SEATCA’s Tobacco Industry Watch website.
Previous ASEAN Tobacco Watch updates can be found here.