London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

A British tobacco company tried to corner the cigarette market in Europe's poorest country, secret documents have revealed.

British American Tobacco (BAT) attempted to take over the state monopoly in tobacco in Moldova, a tiny nation once part of the Soviet Union.

And the firm planned an intensive marketing campaign to target young people and women aimed at increasing cigarette consumption in a country with already high levels of smoking-related diseases.

BAT also planned to lobby the Moldovan government to block efforts to introduce the kind of tobacco advertising restrictions common in western Europe and North America.

Lead author of the report. Dr Anna Gilmore of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "This is part of the corporate culture of BAT - they want a climate in which they can operate with impunity.

"And that has the potential to very badly impact on health in their target countries."

BAT's tactics were revealed in a paper written for this week's edition of The Lancet by a team based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The documents were made available through the Guildford Archiving Project, which won access to millions of pages of BAT internal documents.

Moldova, near Romania and the Ukraine, is a small agricultural country with a population of 4.3m. Its main exports are tobacco and alcohol.

The documents show that, although a competitive tendering process was later announced, BAT and German tobacco company Reemtsma both tried to set up a closed deal with the Moldovan authorities.

BAT aimed for a monopoly position, backed by excise rules developed by the company to favour its products.

The firm attempted to win favour by donating funds to help flood relief efforts in the impoverished country and by providing agricultural machinery.

And BAT predicted its planned advertising campaign would increase the number of smokers, especially women - in contradiction of the usual industry claim that advertising only encourages existing smokers to swap brands.

Dr Gilmore said: "It's evident from the tactics revealed here that countries undertaking tobacco industry privatisation and the organisations advising them need to ensure a transparent process and a truly competitive tender in order to maximise potential revenue gains.

"To prevent the predicted increase in consumption likely to arise through the growth of advertising and decline in prices, effective tobacco control policies, particularly comprehensive advertising bans and adequate taxation rules should be implemented before privatisation happens."