Ignoring the cancer risks of cigarettes As far back as 1958, BAT had information that cigarettes cause cancer. Three senior BAT scientists – H.R. Bentley, D.G.I. Felton, and W.W. Reid – travelled to the United States that year and talked to dozens of experts inside and outside of the tobacco industry. According to industry documents, all but one of those consulted believed a connection between cigarettes and cancer had been proved.
Smoking bans Industry documents from the 1970s to the late 1990s shows that tobacco companies were seriously concerned about
fatwas against smoking by Muslim jurists in
Muslim majority countries.
Nigerian lawsuit The Nigerian federal government filed a lawsuit against BAT and two other tobacco companies in 2007. Nigeria sought $42.4 billion, $34.4 billion of which the government seeks in anticipation of the future cost of treating Nigerians for tobacco-related illnesses. It also sought $1.04 billion as a fine for the companies' advertising and marketing campaign allegedly targeting Nigerian youth, and has asked the companies to fund an awareness campaign to educate young people about the dangers of their product. Several Nigerian state governments filed similar petitions. The government withdrew its lawsuit in February 2008.
Marketing practices In 2008, the company was the subject of a
BBC Two documentary, in which
Duncan Bannatyne investigated the marketing practices of the company in Africa and specifically the way the company targets younger Africans with branded music events, competitions and the sale of single cigarette sticks. Many of the practices uncovered by Bannatyne appeared to break BAT's own code of conduct and company standards. Towards the end of the programme, Bannatyne interviewed Chris Proctor, Head of Science and Regulation, in which Proctor admitted that advertisements targeting children from three African countries were 'disappointing'. In many of these undeveloped countries, the awareness of health risks from smoking is very low or nonexistent. In September 2001, BAT invested US$7.1 million in North Korean state-owned enterprise called the Korea Sogyong Trading Corporation, which employs 200 people in Pyongyang to produce up to two billion cigarettes a year. The operation is run by BAT's Singapore Division. Brands of cigarettes produced are Kumgansan, Craven A and Viceroy. BAT claims that the cigarettes are produced only for consumption in North Korea, although there are allegations that the cigarettes are smuggled for sale overseas. British American Tobacco was declared the winner of the 2008
Roger Award, the award for the worst transnational corporation operating in New Zealand. British American Tobacco spent more than €700,000
lobbying the EU in 2008, up to four times as much as the company declared on the EU's register of interest representatives, according to a report by
Corporate Europe Observatory. The report argues that BAT's hidden lobbying activities, which are clearly not in the public interest, should be exposed to public scrutiny.
Canadian class action lawsuit The three largest Canadian tobacco companies, Imperial Tobacco Canada (a division of British American Tobacco),
JTI-Macdonald Corp and Rothmans Benson & Hedges, were the subject of the largest class action lawsuit in Canadian history. The case started on 12 March 2012 in
Quebec Superior Court, and the companies face a potential payout of C$27 billion (US$21.6 billion) in damages and penalties. In addition, a number of Canadian provinces are teaming to sue tobacco companies to recover healthcare costs caused by smoking. On 1 June 2015, Quebec Superior Court Justice Brian Riordan has awarded more than $15 billion to Quebec smokers in a landmark case that pitted them against three Canadian cigarette giants, including JTI-Macdonald Corp.
Australian lawsuit In 2012, British American Tobacco, along with
Philip Morris International and
Imperial Tobacco, sued the Australian Commonwealth government. At the
High Court of Australia, they argued that the Commonwealth's
plain packaging legislation was unconstitutional because it usurped the companies' intellectual property rights and good will on other than just terms. However, the challenge was unsuccessful.
HMRC fine for oversupply In November 2014,
Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) fined BAT £650,000 after it determined that the company glutted the Belgian market with tobacco products with the likelihood these products would illegally find themselves back into the UK, with UK excise taxes not paid. The event highlighted a tobacco-smuggling issue that many anti-tobacco activists have been attempting to bring to light for years. Following several investigations, HMRC reportedly seized more than 1.4 billion cigarettes and 330 tons of hand rolling tobacco in 2013–2014. BAT denied all claims and described the allegation and fine as "unjustified".
Bribery and threats in Africa In late November 2015, an episode of BBC's
Panorama programme alleged that BAT was bribing officials in Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya in exchange for their limiting the implementation of the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in their respective countries. The episode showed documents provided by whistleblower Paul Hopkins, who worked for BAT in Kenya for 13 years. BAT denied the claims. In 2017, it was reported that BAT and other tobacco companies used a mixture of threats and bullying behaviour to stop or lessen the implementation of anti-smoking legislation in at least eight African countries. One document showed that in Uganda BAT stated that the Tobacco Control Act flew in the face of the country's constitution. Another document showed that lawyers acting on behalf of BAT requested that the high court in Kenya "quash in its entirety" anti-smoking legislation. In January 2021, the Serious Fraud Office closed its investigation into corruption at BAT after concluding that the evidence gathered “did not meet the evidential test for prosecution as defined in the Code for Crown Prosecutors”. On 14 September 2021, in a report published by the NGO STOP, the NGO accused British American Tobacco of having distributed more than $600,000 in the form of cash, cars or campaign donations to dozens of politicians, legislators, civil servants, journalists and employees of competing companies between 2008 and 2013. In November 2012, the Zimbabwean government arrested several people for spying on factories owned by local tobacco companies, including
Pacific Cigarette Company (PCC). BAT's involvement was suspected but not proven. Later that month, President
Robert Mugabe accused BAT of spying and hijacking PCC trucks to "kill competition". In September 2021, a
BBC Panorama investigation found evidence that BAT had enlisted Forensic Security Services, a South African Security firm, to sabotage and surveil factories owned by competitors, including PCC. After the spies were arrested, BAT negotiated a bribe so that the government would release them from jail.
Pakistani lobbying efforts In April 2015, medical experts and anti-tobacco campaigners accused Philip Barton, the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, of lobbying for BAT interests. The group released photos showing Barton attending a meeting on 13 March in Islamabad, where BAT executives attempted to convince the Pakistani Finance and Health Minister to veto plans requiring large health warnings on cigarette packets. This activity was deemed contrary to
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) policy. It followed an earlier incident when the British Ambassador to Panama was reprimanded for similar activity on BAT's behalf.
Tobacco marketing in unstable nations and conflict zones In August 2017, former employee and whistleblower Paul Hopkins released internal documents to
The Guardian, a British newspaper, claiming British American Tobacco actively made efforts to market and sell its products in unstable, deeply impoverished nations and conflict zones, including
Somalia,
South Sudan,
Syria and
Iraq. Leaked PowerPoint presentations from 2011 included details of strategies to continue selling
black market cigarettes "in black paper bags" in parts of Somalia controlled by the fundamentalist Islamic militant group
Al-Shabaab, plans to develop "a consumer relevant brand portfolio" and "sustainable... volume growth" in
South Sudan just two days before the nation gained independence, and the active marketing and growth of the Kent cigarette brand in Iraq and Syria, despite "volatile markets" in the middle of the
Iraq War and
Syrian Civil War, respectively. In February 2021, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (OCCRP) published an investigation according to which trafficking of BAT cigarettes had helped finance
jihadist and separatist groups in northern
Mali using, among other mechanisms, a system of oversupplying the country with tobacco. This has allowed billions of cigarettes to be smuggled out of the country. In April 2023, a subsidiary admitted that it had sold cigarettes to
North Korea. This act is a violation of the existing sanctions imposed by the US against North Korea. Based on the investigations of US authorities, the activity spanned for ten years, from 2007 to 2017. Because of this breach, BAT is obligated to pay $635m (£512m) and interests to US authorities. Attorney General Matthew Olsen,
Department of Justice's assistant described the settlement fee as DOJ's first and largest single North Korean sanctions penalty. == See also ==