Source: Health Coalition Aotearoa
Public Health experts are questioning a decision by the Government to purchase $575,000 worth of vaping products from a company accused of allegedly bribing the New Zealand Government.
They will be meeting today at 12.30pm today on Parliament’s forecourt to raise their concerns and call for a public inquiry into the influence of the tobacco and vape industry on the Government’s Smokefree policy.
The company chosen to supply vaping kits to Government funded stop smoking services is Chinese based vaping giant RELX.
Reporting by The Straits Times in Singapore obtained leaked call recordings where employees of RELX can be heard discussing bribing the New Zealand Government.
RELX employees can be heard saying: “we don’t do that visibly in Australia and New Zealand. But government payments are not a problem for us because, because these are extremely… how do I put it… subtle.”
“It’s just like how the Big Tobacco does it, right, they go through multiple shell companies and associations and consultants and agencies and whatnot. And it’s almost… you need to have a very persistent investigative journalist to find out…”
Additional reporting by 60 Minutes in Australia confirmed the company at the centre of these allegations is RELX.
Thousands of RELX vaping products distributed to stop smoking services in early January were purchased by Te Whatu Ora. There doesn’t appear to be a formal tender process that took place to choose a vaping supplier and funding came out of the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Innovation fund.
With serious accusations of bribery surfacing the Associate Minister of Health Casey Costello needs to front up and explain why no tender process was followed and why the Government chose vaping company RELX to supply $575k worth of vaping products.
We are now over a year into our Government appearing to have been influenced by the tobacco and vape industry in their decision making and now there are accusations of bribery taking place.
RELX has a questionable history of following relevant New Zealand legislation and regulations here and overseas. RELX continued to publish prohibited advertising including using Instagram influencers following new laws to crack down on vape advertising in late 2020.
The Straits Times stories:
60 Minutes story:
The Age/Sydney Morning Herald version (also attached) of the 60 Minutes piece:
RELX ownership
Mission Holdings Limited is an umbrella company for Mission Retail Limited, Mission Distribution Limited and Mission Brands.
The shareholders/directors are Jing Zhang and Jingrui Liu (the companies office address listed for both is: 4 Magee Place, East Tamaki Heights, Auckland, 2016) and Haodong (Sky) Deng and Dan Shan (Both share the same address: 9 Gilford Place, East Tamaki Heights, Auckland, 2016).
Jing Zhang worked for British American Tobacco for 3 years 6 months from July 2007, then for Philip Morris International for 8 years and 3 months from Jan 2011 until March 2019, and founded Mission Brands in April of 2019.
Haodong (Sky) Deng worked for Philip Morris from November 2014 until March 2019 before also co-founding Mission Brands in April 2019.