BAT accused of paying up to bribes to Zimbabwe’s Mugabe in BBC Panorama documentary

A BBC Panorama investigation has found evidence that British American Tobacco reportedly paid up to $500,000 in bribes to the former controversial Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe.

In a joint investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the University of Bath, documentary makers say they managed to obtain thousands of leaked documents. 

These allegedly show that the cigarette maker paid between $300,000 and $500,000 to Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party in 2013 and it funded up to 200 secret informants in South Africa in a bid to damage rivals. 

Scroll down for video 

A BBC Panorama investigation has found evidence that British American Tobacco reportedly paid up to $500,000 in bribes to the former controversial Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe

In a preview clip of the Panorama documentary (airing tonight on BBC One at 9pm) a man named Pieter Snyders talks openly about the corruption he witnessed.

Snyders worked for a company called Forensic Security Services (FSS) on behalf of BAT, with the firm brought in to help fight the black-market cigarette trade.

But Snyders claims that instead of tackling counterfeit goods, he went about breaking UK law by hiring ‘spies’, paying bribes, and using illegal tracking devices. 

He says BAT ‘definitely’ knew he was paying bribes to staff from rival companies to hand over information because he had to specify in his invoices what the money was used for. 

Touching on the instructions he was given when it came to closing in on competitors, Snyders adds: ‘[BAT] said that we must tap their telephones, do physical surveillance on them, on their trucks. 

‘Where they’re going, where they offload, and follow them all over.’

When quizzed if BAT was ‘genuinely interested in tackling illicit trade’ or it was more about undermining rivals, Snyders replies: ‘I think it was undermining rivals.’ 

He adds that he ‘can’t remember one’ successful prosecution during the time he worked for the FSS on behalf of BAT. 

Snyders says that he decided to speak out because he has nothing to hide and he thinks it’s ‘the right thing to do’.

In response to the allegations, BAT’s lawyers told Panorama: ‘We empathetically reject the mischaracterisation of our conduct. 

‘Our efforts have been aimed at helping law enforcement agencies in the fight against the criminal trade in tabacco products.

In a preview clip of the Panorama documentary (airing tonight on BBC One at 9pm) a man named Pieter Snyders talks openly about the corruption he witnessed

Snyders says BAT ‘definitely’ knew he was paying bribes to staff from rival companies to hand over information because he had to specify in his invoices what the money was used for

‘Acting responsibly and with integrity underpins the foundations of our culture.’

It isn’t the first time BAT has been accused of bribery.

The misconduct allegations first surfaced on Panorama in December 2015, when the BBC current affairs programme broadcast claims by whistleblower, Paul Hopkins.

BAT was accused of bribing government officials from at least five African nations in an attempt to undermine a United Nations public health treaty, in breach of the UK Bribery Act.

However, after more than three years investigating the cigarette giant over allegations it bribed government officials in Africa, the Serious Fraud Office dropped its investigation into BAS at the beginning of the year. 

It said it did not have enough evidence to support a realistic prospect of conviction.    

BAT says it fully cooperated with the SFO’s investigation.

Watch BBC Panorama: Dirty Secrets of the Cigarette Business on BBC One on Monday at 19:30 BST, or on BBC World on Saturday 18 September 02:30 GMT and 15:30 GMT, and Sunday 19 at 09:30 GMT and 21:30 GMT.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk