Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has opened an investigation into British American Tobacco (BAT), two years after allegations were made of bribery in Africa during an investigation by the BBC.

The company, whose brands include Dunhill, Lucky Strike and Rothmans, said on Tuesday that it intended to cooperate with the formal SFO investigation, even as it continued with its own investigation.

The SFO confirmed it was investigating “suspicions of corruption in the conduct of business,” by BAT and its subsidiaries.

‘No breathing space’

Following a five-month investigation in 2015, the BBC’s Panorama programme, which drew on documents supplied by Paul Hopkins, a former BAT employee in Africa, alleged that British American Tobacco’s employees had bribed politicians, public officials and employees of rivals.

“My job was to ensure the competition never got a breathing space,” Hopkins told the BBC at the time, saying that the view was that “bribery was the cost of doing business in Africa”. The bribes were paid to block anti-tobacco legislation and damage competitors, and undermined a United Nations programme that aimed to save lives, the programme said.

Initially, the company expressed its disappointment with the BBC’s decision to publish historic allegations made by “rogue former employees… whose employment was terminated in acrimonious circumstances and who have a clear vendetta against us”.

However, by February 2016 it had shifted its tone, saying that it had appointed an independent law firm to again review the allegations. “We take these allegations extremely seriously… All our 50,000 employees are required to understand and abide by our Standards of Business Conduct. We will not tolerate corruption in our business anywhere...”

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