More Information Comes Out in BAT Bribery Allegations

British American Tobacco (BAT) company has been in the past few weeks alleged to have paid a lot of money as a bribe to Kenyan civil servants as well as politicians as a ‘cost of doing business in Kenya’.

First it was about the Bungoma Senator Moses Masika Wetangula, then the Kenya Revenue Authority officials and now former Justice Minister Martha Karua all being alleged having received bribes from the tobacco company.

Kenya Revenue Authority has announced that it is working closely with the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) as well as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to try and unearth the truth concerning the bribery scam.

This revelation surfaced after a former BAT employee, Paul Hopkins, told BBC in a report that British American Tobacco paid huge bribes to Kenyan officials to advance its interests as well as making the business environment for the competitors hostile.

In another incident, Solomon Muyita, another former employee has claimed that BAT heavily bribed a local official in Uganda in order for the official to misreport the impact from a fire at one of its warehouses in Uganda. He alleges that the cigarette group bribed a Ugandan official so as to secure a report that stated that there were no harmful effects from the fire.

According to BBC, British American Tobacco bribed officials from three African countries as a way of undermining the United Nation’s global Anti-Smoking treaty.

It has emerged that representatives from the three African countries who were also connected to the World Health Organization’s framework convention on tobacco control took hefty bribes from the company.

These bribery allegation concerning Kenyan officials came just a few days after President Uhuru Kenyatta declared war on corruption as well as ordering for a total lifestyle audit of all the Kenya Revenue Authority officials.

Article by Juma Fred.