According to internal company documents cited by two newspapers, British American Tobacco — the world’s second-largest tobacco company and producer of Lucky Strike, Kent and other cigarette brands — arranged for billions of cigarettes to be smuggled across national borders.
London-based Guardian and Los Angeles Times newspapers reported the tobacco company supplied wholesalers and distributors with the cigarettes knowing they would be brought to and sold in other countries.
Using middlemen, British American Tobacco avoided expensive government taxes and import fees, the papers said.
Although documents do not prove the company directly took part in the smuggling, Jon Ferguson, former antitrust chief of the Washington state attorney general’s office, told the Times, “terms found in the documents like ‘duty not paid,’ in so many words means smuggled cigarettes.”
Company spokesmen characterized the use of these documents as “highly selective” and “out of context.”