Corruption-busting hero Van Loggerenberg: ‘Tobacco ban has criminalised cigarette smokers’

Johann van Loggerenberg is no stranger to the underhand tactics of the all-powerful tobacco industry. In this podcast, Tobacco Wars author Van Loggerenberg chats to BizNews founder Alec Hogg about the influx of foreign transnational organised crime syndicates and their newly formed liaisons and new modus operandi and channels that they're setting up during this time of lockdown. Van Loggerenberg estimates that by month three of the lockdown – around R6bn had gone into the unrecorded economy. While he believes that the government's intentions behind the alcohol and cigarette bans were ultimately good, smokers have been put in the same category as criminals. Van Loggerenberg says that no where in the world has a ban ever worked and that in these unprecedented times we need to be more creative. – Nadya Swart

Welcome to Johann van Loggerenberg, who is pretty well known in the BizNews community for the work that you've done in shining the light into places where those who are in there, don't necessarily want to see those lights shone. You've been involved in a global roundtable on illicit crime. How did you get the invitation to that?

I'm not quite sure. I suspect it was by chance because it's a roundtable of experts. It was certainly a privilege to be part of the process. Effectively, it consisted of a number of experts throughout the world from different continents that had a look at the illicit trade in Covid era.

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