Global Reach of Tobacco Company's Involvement in Cigarette ...

. . : Global Reach of Tobacco Company's Involvement In Cigarette Smuggling Exposed B Page 8 of 9
Similar enterprises took place across Asia. In Taiwan, BAT
reckoned in the early 1990s that it had about a 1 billion share
of the 4-billion-a-year "transit" market . In Thailand, the market
was over 555 million a year . In Vietnam, it was 1 billion a year.
In 1993, BAT employed a single senior executive to take
charge of GT sales around the globe . The post of "senior
regional export manager" was based at BATCo in Staines .
Although ostensibly the job was to coordinate sales in Asia
and the Pacific, the executive's second task was "Co-ordinator
of GT worldwide . "
In this capacity, the manager was made "responsible to all five
Regional Directors for the co-ordination of all BATCo general
trade sales worldwide." He was charged with th e
"maintenance of profiles of all main dealers, and monitoring of
supply routes ; negotiation of trans-regional accounts, e .g .
SUTL . . . ."
But there was a special warning . "Due to the nature of Export
General Trade business, the Distributors handling this are not
easy to manage and difficult to motivate . Their loyalty is
sometimes questionable . Due to the type of business and
sums involved, bribery attempts are frequent . . . [The person
appointed] must be permanently alert to the confidentiality
needed in some areas of the business ." He had to be on
continual lookout for new smuggling routes, by conducting a
"proactive search for new GT business ."
The report concluded, without apparent irony, that "integrity is
an absolute must . "
The disclosed BAT documents indicate that "GT," "Transit," or,
more plainly, smuggling seemed to be seen by BAT Industries
in the early 1990s as a necessary and indeed substantial part
of being competitive and successful in the internationa l
tobacco business. BAT Industries directors were told in a
1993 paper: "A significant proportion of the world export trade
is transit . It exists wherever there are widely different excise
rates and trade restrictions, and is expected to continue where
these conditions exist." But, as with their Singapore agent
SUTL, they also had a long-term desire to move, when and if
advantageous, to legal markets - provided always that
national taxes were low and that current and future smokers
were easy to reach .
Related Reports :
• >Major Tobacco Multinational Implicated
In Cigarette Smuggling, Tax Evasion,
Documents Show (Jan 31, 2000)
Related Links: (Links will open in new browser
window)
• Tobacco Firm Relied on Smuggling in
Asia Market, Memos Reveal (Los Angeles
Times )
http://www .public-i.org/story_01_020200.htm 04/02/2000
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ume14a99/pdf
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