The bribery claims levelled against UK’s British American Tobacco (BAT) Tuesday spread its tentacles across corporate Kenya sucking in rival Mastermind Tobacco and forcing out an East African Breweries Limited (EABL) executive.
The British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Panorama expose found that BAT paid government officials to, among other ends, stifle competitors – a claim that appears to lend credence to Mastermind’s long-running stance that the UK firm has been using underhand tactics to entrench its dominance of Kenya’s tobacco market.
EABL was drawn into affair after it emerged that a corporate affairs executive it hired from BAT Kenya, Julie Adell-Owino, organised payment of bribes to senior Kenya officials, including Bungoma senator Moses Wetang’ula, for reasons that were not explained. Ms Adell-Owino worked at BAT Kenya as the company’s chief lobbyist.
Ms Adell-Owino on Tuesday resigned from EABL, signalling that the brewer did not want to be associated with the corporate upheaval at BAT.
Paul Hopkins, who worked at BAT Kenya for 13 years, told the BBC investigative team that he and others, including Ms Adell-Owino, were tasked with the role of ensuring that “the competition never got a breathing space.”
Mastermind said it was studying the developments and would issue a comprehensive response once it was in possession of more information.
Mr Hopkins, who leaked hundreds of secret documents including emails to the BBC’s investigative team, is expected to meet investigators from the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) this week.
BAT Kenya’s parent — which holds a 60 per cent stake in the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm — could pay hefty fines if found guilty of bribery offences.
The scandal highlights the ruthless tactics employed by multinationals in Kenya and other African countries to win business and defeat regulations in concert with corrupt local officials.
American tyre company Goodyear and UK’s Oxford University Press are among the multinationals that were recently fined hundreds of millions of shillings in their home countries for bribing officials in Kenya and other African countries.
Mr Hopkins said he started paying bribes after he was told it was the cost of doing business in Africa, revealing the entrenched practice in BAT’s African operations.
The leaked documents show Ms Adell-Owino in a July 2012 email requested the purchase of a business class plane ticket to London for Mr Wetang’ula who was then the Minister of Trade.
“Mr Wetang’ula will be “hosted at Globe House, BAT’s London headquarters,” the email says, adding that the transaction should be “paperless” and there should be “no receipts if any in his name”.
