Covering Its Tracks: Is British American Tobacco Still Involved in Illicit Trade?

In the early 2000s, the tobacco industry’s involvement in smuggling its own products was widely exposed. To mitigate the problem, some governments formed anti-illicit agreements with tobacco companies, but those agreements also let tobacco companies access and influence policymakers.

Now, new analyses of more than 200 documents from a set of 15,000 leaked documents from British American Tobacco shed further light on the scale of its involvement in illicit trade. Researchers’ findings suggest that the tobacco giant employed many tactics to continue its involvement, including using illicit means to enter closed markets such as North Korea.

Learn more in STOP’s fact sheet, or read the analyses from University of Bath, a partner in STOP.