what do you think about a company like bat, through fss, doing the sort of things that you ve just described? no, i think it s utterly disgusting. i think it s. it s shocking. but they re doing it because they re getting away with it. british american tobacco says the allegations are not new and have been investigated. and it rejects the allegation that any steps were taken with the aim of impacting the lawful activities of legitimate competitors or for commercial advantage. we ve found it wasn t just south africa where bat was prepared to break the law. its illegal operation crossed over the border to zimbabwe too. and we ve discovered how far bat was prepared to go to get what it wanted.
i hope that the serious fraud office make contact with me. i hope they make contact with each and every individual that worked for fss, and being paid by bat to do this illegitimate stuff. my bank accounts are there, go look. i received that money. i handed it out in cash. if you were approached by, for example, the british authorities, would you tell them what you ve told me? yes, i would. why? i ve got nothing to hide, and i think, er, that s the right thing to do. panorama has already revealed how british american tobacco used corruption to undermine health reforms. now we ve exposed how, for 16 years, it used bribery to damage its rivals. bat the company that stopped at nothing to sell cigarettes.
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against its rivals there. the plan was to reduce the production capacity at factories in zimbabwe ultimately resulting in the closure of three of them. robert mugabe s regime didn t want fss in the country. so fss relied on a localfirm to do the dirty work. but the zimbabwean company got caught spying. and three of its directors were charged with illegal surveillance. these documents show a plan was hatched to get the directors off the hook and protect bat s name. bat was told it had to make a large donation to robert mugabe s party to get the men freed. this man was sent in to negotiate the deal for bat. he doesn t want to be identified. he says he bribed zimbabwean government officials to set up a meeting with them. i had to make it clear that, er, they re going to expect a nice, thick envelope of notes, you know. i would be given a lump sum
protect their market share. to undermine its rivals, bat turned to a private security company forensic security services, or fss. it s where our two whistle blowers worked. were bat genuinely interested in tackling illicit trade or did you believe that it really was all about undermining rivals? i think it was undermining rivals. how many successful prosecutions were there from the work you did for fss for bat? i can t remember one. you re there to sort of undermine this illegal system. i think most of us would imagine that that ends up in the courts and prosecutions, and you can t think of one case? no, i can t think of any case, no. the instruction that we got from management, bat management and fss management at the time was to close down the opposition. i reported everything back to them. i even got the instructions from bat personally, personal instructions