BRITISH American Tobacco (BAT) has moved to tackle allegations that it was involved in spying on competitors and bribing tax and law enforcement officials, commissioning an independent probe and ceasing all its activities in SA to combat the illicit tobacco trade pending the outcome of the investigation.BAT SA’s new CE, Soraya Zoueihid, has also terminated, as a precaution, the services of the private investigations agency, Forensic Security Services (FSS), which BAT had retained to assist law enforcement agencies to tackle illicit tobacco, but is alleged to have engaged in spying and corrupting law enforcement officials.FSS was dismissed two weeks ago after allegations of unlawful behaviour were posted on a Twitter account that links to about 12,000 online documents purporting to support allegations of unlawful conduct by BAT SA.Zoueihid said in an interview with Business Day on Friday that she had notified the relevant South African authorities of the steps BAT had taken, due to t...
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