Johann van Loggerenberg - Tobacco Wars: Inside the spy games and dirty tricks of southern Africa’s cigarette trade

I worked for the South African Revenue Service (SARS) for close to sixteen years. Before that I was a policeman investigating organised crime. During my time in the civil service, I came to understand the dark side of the tobacco trade in southern Africa and elsewhere. By the time I left SARS in early 2015, I was overseeing over eighty different projects, of which one focused on the cigarette market in South Africa and our neighbouring states. This project was the main reason why I came to understand the trade a little better than most. Whereas I am limited by law in providing information about taxpayers and SARS operations which are not in the public domain, this has not been a hindrance for me in telling this story. Everything I reveal in this book is publicly available and verifiable, except where I say otherwise. Much of what I tell I was able to confirm after I had left SARS. In some instances, I protect the identities of people by agreement or for fear of their and their loved ones safety. In some chapters, as I shall indicate, I have also used some fictional licence to give the reader a sense of the stories I was told, while also protecting the identities of some of those involved. These stories are denoted by their italicised titles. Some of what I share in this book has to some extent been simplified. To include all entities and people involved in the entire value chain, and all the intricacies and goings-on in the tobacco trade, in a single book would be an impossibility. There are the growers, traders, leaf processors, markets, transporters, clearing agents, warehousing and logistical agents, to name a few. That some of them are also involved in scams and dirty tricks is not in any doubt, but for the sake of simplicity I limit the focus of this story to the primary role-players in the sector.

I have spent many hours finding old court records, interviewing people, searching out evidence and researching documents and reports available in the public domain, in order to ensure that I do not breach my oath of secrecy. For every tale I tell, I have documentary evidence, records, emails, recordings, text exchanges and other data whose origins I explain in this book. Some aspects that I would have been unable to write about on account of the legal limitations imposed on me as a former SARS official no longer applied to me because I was able to obtain access to certain records, documents and information in the public domain as a civilian after having resigned from SARS in 2015. There is also some precedence for publishing information about SARS and its investigations. Since 2012, SARS has used the services of external authors to study real cases, interview SARS officials and then write them up for public dissemination as case studies using pseudonyms. SARS has also collaborated with academic institutions over the years and allowed them to publish studies and books about SARS and its inner workings. Just to be sure, I had lawyers check the contents.

For ease of reading I have limited the number of my footnotes but include at the back of the book a list of references and further reading for those interested in the topic. I am no expert in the field of cigarette-making, and dont pass myself off as such. Most of what the reader will learn from reading this book came to my attention in some instances by chance, in the course of my duties and thereafter. The information contained here gives an inside glimpse into the murky world that lurks beneath this scandal-infested industry. I believe it is in the public interest to know what I came to discover. Though none of our law enforcement agencies have ever acted upon the evidence I present here of serious offences, it is in the interest of justice that these stories be exposed.

Johann van Loggerenberg