VOA Exclusive: Tobacco Giant’s Burkina Faso Distributor Denies Smuggling, Funding Terrorism

OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO - Two investigative reports this year accused the Burkina Faso representative of tobacco giant Philip Morris of funding terrorism through tobacco smuggling. In an exclusive interview with VOA, Apollinaire Compaoré rejects those findings. 

Selling cigarettes to smugglers who pay jihadists to protect their convoys.    That’s the accusation leveled against the Burkina Faso representative of Phillip Morris International by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP.    In a February report, the Sarajevo-based group cited officials, rivals and former colleagues of Apollinaire Compaoré who accused him of indirectly funding terrorism by working with smugglers who carry not only cigarettes, but drugs and people into Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Libya.