OCCRP Warns of Industry Involvement in West African Cigarette Smuggling

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has released two articles in connection with its investigations into cigarette smuggling activities in West Africa.

The first article, entitled ‘British American Tobacco Fights Dirty in West Africa’, claims that billions of cigarettes, mostly produced by BAT, are smuggled north through Mali every year on their way to the grey markets of the Sahel and northern Africa (the Sahel is the vast, semi-arid region in Africa that separates the Sahara Desert to the north from tropical savannas to the south).

The key findings of the investigation (which are based on leaked documents, supported by trade data and interviews with insurgents, former employees, experts, and officials), are summarised in the article as follows:

• The profits of cigarette smuggling fuel the bloody struggle between jihadists, armed militias, and corrupt military officers that has turned northern Mali into a lawless warzone.

• BAT started to oversupply Mali soon after the north fell to militants, knowing its product would be fodder for traffickers, according to dozens of interviews.

• Internal documents show BAT used informants in West Africa to keep abreast of the illicit trade.

• Mali’s government has ignored years of blatantly false tax figures from Imperial Brands, a shareholder of the state tobacco company that distributes Dunhill cigarettes in militant-run areas.

Dunhill is the most commonly smuggled brand in the region. It is produced by BAT in South Africa, and, in recent years, has accounted for up to 37% of South Africa’s total cigarette exports. Unlike locally produced brands, the Dunhill cigarettes come in so-called ‘clean label’ packs, with a health warning in French, which allows them to be sold on the grey market.

Another popular brand is Marlboro, which is reportedly passed to smugglers by a politically connected Philip Morris (PMI) representative in Burkina Faso (as described in the section below).

It is hard to determine exactly how many illicit cigarettes are smuggled through Mali, said the article, but trade data, information from customs officials, leaked BAT documents, and industry experts indicate there may be up to 4.7 billion surplus cigarettes in Mali every year.

The article quotes Hana Ross, a University of Cape Town economist and member of the university’s Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products, who refers to this region as the playground of the tobacco industry.

‘They know they can get away with stuff. It’s much easier to bribe. It’s much easier to cheat the system,’ she said. ‘Governments here are generally weak. This is where they do things that they don’t dare to do in Europe anymore.’ 

The Burkina Faso connection

In the second OCCRP article, entitled ‘Marlboro’s Man: Philip Morris’ Representative in Burkina Faso is a Known Cigarette Smuggler,’ the OCCRP claims that the representative in question, Apollinaire Compaoré, has made millions from smuggling PMI cigarettes across West Africa.

The article also states that, for years, Compaoré worked with notorious Nigerian drug lord ‘Chérif Cocaine’ to traffic Marlboro cigarettes north to Libya, and that he ran a major warehouse near Burkina Faso’s border with Niger and Mali that supplied illicit tobacco to militants from northern Mali.

This is no secret, though, claims OCCRP. One of Compaoré’s companies has been implicated in trafficking Philip Morris’s brands in three countries and he has been named as a smuggler by the UN. Yet he is still Philip Morris’ man in Burkina Faso today.

PMI confirmed that one of Compaoré’s companies is its sole distributor in Burkina Faso, but did not give more details on its relationship with him. A spokesperson said the company was unaware that its products destined for Burkina Faso are being illegally diverted to neighbouring countries.

Allen Gallagher, a tobacco control researcher at the University of Bath, UK, said Philip Morris is accountable for its people on the ground. The company settled allegations it was involved in the widespread smuggling of its own cigarettes with the European Commission in 2004 by paying $1.25 billion and promising to clean up its supply chain.

‘Transnational tobacco companies like PMI are ultimately responsible for their products and where they end up, as is evidenced by the multiple lawsuits such companies have faced in the past when their cigarettes have been diverted from legal supply chains onto illicit markets,’ Gallagher told OCCRP.

The complete articles are available here: