The whistle-blower

The man who blew the whistle on the alleged racket of bribes relating to British American Tobacco (BAT) says he and his wife still get death threats.

“Often, my wife will be in a shopping centre and guys who’ve clearly followed her will tell her they’re going to come get us,” says Francois van der Westhuizen in an interview with the Financial Mail.

“It doesn’t bother me;, I’ve had plenty of threats in my life.”

Van der Westhuizen worked in the murder and robbery section of the SA Police in 1987 during the apartheid era, before being hired as an investigator at the Road Accident Fund in 1999, where he bust a R92m scam involving crooked doctors, lawyers and police.

Tall, with a moustache and a brusque, no-nonsense demeanour, he still has the hardened air of a cop.

In 2012 he was hired by Forensic Security Services (FSS), a company that works as the contracted security arm of BAT for an estimated R150m/year.

“We talk about state capture, but BAT has done state capture high-up — when it comes to Sars (SA Revenue Service), the police, and state intelligence,” he alleges.

He says that once he joined FSS, he was asked to work full-time on its programme to root out illicit tobacco.

“Our work mostly revolved around conducting surveillance on its [BAT’s] rivals, like Carnilinx and Gold Leaf, and then reporting back. But soon it escalated into far more serious stuff, like paying off people.”

This “serious stuff” is detailed in a 70-page affidavit he signed, which was then used by Carnilinx, a “value-branded” cigarette manufacturer owned by Adriano Mazzotti, the charismatic benefactor of Julius Malema. Carnilinx took BAT and a lawyer, Belinda Walter, to court to ask the court to stop it “interfering with its trade”, using this testimony. The judge dismissed the original application on procedural grounds, and a new case is likely to be lodged soon for a full hearing.

It’s a reputational nightmare for BAT, the second-largest company listed on the JSE, with a market value of R1.81 trillion. Locally, it’s a Goliath, controlling 85% of the tobacco market through brands including Rothmans, Dunhill, Lucky Strike and Peter Stuyvesant.

A stash of explosive documents was released in recent days by someone using the pseudonym SA Tobacco Espionage, which casts new light on alleged efforts by tobacco firms to compromise the SA Revenue Service (Sars). This is important, considering that the claims of a “rogue unit” at Sars, which are being used to target finance minister Pravin Gordhan, were first made by tobacco interests.

Thanks to Van der Westhuizen, however, the agendas are becoming clearer. “I worked for FSS, but BAT was aware of what was happening every step of the way,” he says. “They even sent me for training with their staff from the UK, so they can’t claim they didn’t know.”

In his affidavit, Van der Westhuizen says he soon discovered he’d really been hired “to disrupt the business of BAT’s competitors” using a network of corrupted police and Sars officials.

He claims BAT had an “unholy alliance” with law enforcement agents, and also political strings it could pull with “senior members of the SA law enforcement circles”.

“Each law enforcement agent, whether from Sars, the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) or SAPS, would be on BAT’s informal payroll, receiving a minimum of R2,000 each per month, up to R5,000 each per month. Effectively this was a bribe,” he claims.

These officials would allegedly help break into various properties, illegally intercept phone calls, plant cameras in offices and homes, and pay police to conduct raids to gather documents.

Van der Westhuizen says he was the “project manager”, under whom a network of “handlers” would liaise with 171 “agents” who were paid “directly by BAT through FSS as a conduit”. “The payments were made in cash so that there was no direct link to BAT.” In all, he says, these spies were paid more

‘‘ BAT HAD AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS, AND ALSO POLITICAL STRINGS IT COULD PULL FRANCOIS VAN DER WESTHUIZEN