UK Diplomats Lobbying for Tobacco: Burundi
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UK Diplomats Lobbying for Tobacco: Burundi, Tobacco Tactics, updated 03 November 2020, accessed 19 April 2024.
There are strict UK government guidelines governing the engagement of British officials working overseas with tobacco companies,1, designed to limit contact and support compliance with the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).23
A Freedom Of Information (FOI) request submitted by British charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) revealed repeated contact from 2013 to 2017 between Pacific Tobacco International (PTI), a tobacco company based in Zimbabwe, and UK embassy staff and diplomats in Burundi.4
UK Diplomats Assisting Tobacco Company in Burundi
The FOI revealed that senior staff, including the Ambassador at the time (William Gedding), and his predecessor (Ben Llewellyn-Jones), have had repeated contact with PTI in relation to “a long-running compensation claim dating back to 2004 by PTI against the government of Burundi, following PTI being evicted from their premises with some assets seized or damaged”.4 The FOI does not state who represented PTI in discussions with the British officials. From 2014 to 2017 the company’s Global CEO was Nick Hales, a former British American Tobacco executive.5
The repeated contact between British officials and PTI included a formal letter, phone calls and meeting, and served “to update FCO officials on the slow-moving dispute, and as occasionally appropriate, to offer assistance to try and resolve it”.4 The recorded purpose of some of the contact was to “to determine what assistance could be given” or “where UK could and could not help”.4 One meeting in the capital Bujumbura in August 2017, involving the Ambassador and the Senior Advisor of the President of Burundi, was to “to discuss resolution options for the dispute”.4
The apparent justification for UK government involvement with PTI was that the company was “owned by a British national”.4 At the time, the PTI website stated that the company’s Chairman was Adam Molai.6 Molai was the founder of Savannah Tobacco which rebranded as PTI in 2017, presenting itself as a “proudly Zimbabwean” company.7 From the information disclosed, its involvement in Burundi is unclear.
The FCTC and UK guidelines state that “Posts must not…Engage with local foreign governments on behalf of the tobacco industry, except in cases where local policies could be considered protectionist or discriminatory”.123
Given the lack of detail and context in the FOI it is not at all clear whether this was the case in Burundi.
TobaccoTactics Resources
Since the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) came into force in 2005, there have been several instances of direct lobbying by British diplomats overseas on behalf of British American Tobacco (BAT) and its subsidiaries, with repeated contact between UK government overseas staff and the company. For more information see :
Influencing foreign tobacco legislation via diplomats is a known tobacco industry tactic.
For more background and examples see Diplomats Lobbying for Tobacco Companies
Also see:
TCRG Research
A “willingness to be orchestrated”: Why are UK diplomats working with tobacco companies?, R. Alebshehy, K. Silver, P. Chamberlain, Frontiers in Public Health, 17 March 2023, Sec. Public Health Policy, Volume 11 – 2023, doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.977713
For a comprehensive list of all TCRG publications, including TCRG research that evaluates the impact of public health policy, go to the Bath TCRG’s list of publications.
