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Current issue: FRONT PAGES News
 Clinton
administration forms tobacco suit team
Life imprisonment for China's
"Tobacco King"
HK frees ex-tobacco executive Jerry
Lui
Basic rights concerns halt tobacco
ad ban
More sentenced in Chinese smuggling
-Clinton administration forms tobacco suit team-
WASHINGTON, DC - The Clinton administration is assembling its team to
prepare a lawsuit against the tobacco industry to recover health-care costs, but any
decision on how to proceed will take months, a White House official said. Top officials
involved in the effort said the task force would be run by the Justice Department and
include its civil rights, antitrust, and environment divisions.
There was no deadline for a decision, but a spokesman said it would most likely take some
months to reach one.
Clinton took the tobacco industry by surprise in his State of the Union
speech in January when he said intended to file a federal suit against the tobacco
industry to recover federal costs related to caring for people with alleged
smoking-related illnesses. The initiative came after last June's collapse of a $516
billion anti-smoking bill in the U.S. Senate.
The nation's biggest tobacco companies agreed last Nov. 23 to pay 46
states $206 billion and submit to advertising and marketing restrictions in a broad deal
that was the largest civil settlement in history. Estimates of the potential tobacco
industry liability in any federal settlement have been placed at another $150 billion to
$200 billion.
Life imprisonment for China's "Tobacco
King"
BEIJING - Chu Shijian, the former president of the Yuxi Hongta (Group)
Co., was sentenced to life imprisonment by the local court of Yunnan Province for
embezzlement and acquisition of substantial properties through illegal means. Chu, one of
China's most famous entrepreneurs, transformed a small tobacco plant into the largest
tobacco producer in Asia with annual gross profit of nearly 20 billion yuan (US$2.4
billion). His arrest shocked the nation. Chinese Central Television Station gave a special
tape recording of the court progress which attracted many viewers.
HK frees ex-tobacco executive Jerry Lui
HONG KONG - Former tobacco executive Jerry Lui, who fought extradition
from the U.S. by claiming he would not receive justice in post-handover Hong Kong, was
freed in February. Lui, 43, had been serving a three-year, eight-month sentence for
plotting to accept bribes of HK$23.25 million and a HK $10 million loan from cigarette
distributors.
The former export director for British American Tobacco (HK) was jailed
last June after losing an 18-month battle against extradition from the United States to
where he had fled. However, his convictions were overturned when the court ruled vital
evidence against him should not have been allowed to go before the jury.
Lui will now be able to keep the HK$23.25 million that he denied was
paid to him as bribes. He claimed the cash was paid in return for "market
intelligence." The appeal judges also suspended a HK$500,000 fine.
Basic rights concerns halt tobacco ad ban
COLOMBO - A proposed ban on cigarette and alcohol advertising in the
media has been delayed because of concerns about its impact on fundamental business
rights, a government minister said. The ban was due to be enforced from January this year.
"We find that the draft legislation paving the way for the ban ...
is too wide in scope and could interfere with some constitutional provisions relating to
fundamental rights," Prof. Gamini Lakshman Peiris, minister of justice and
constitutional affairs told a local news service. In addition, he said there could be
problems which would impinge upon investments already made in the tobacco and alcohol
industries.
"We were never consulted on this issue," says Gottfried
Thoma, managing director of Ceylon Tobacco Company Ltd., Sri Lanka's monopoly cigarette
manufacturer, and local subsidiary of the transnational British-American Tobacco (BAT).
"Before any policy is formulated, it is only right and reasonable that you hear the
views of the other side as well."
More sentenced in Chinese smuggling
ANYANG, CHINA - Authorities in the central Chinese province of Henan
sentenced former city mayor Yang Shanxiu to 10 years imprisonment for taking bribes and
gifts worth RMB 170,000, an official newspaper said. Yang Shanxiu, who also served as
deputy Communist Party Secretary of Anyang city, was among 11 high-level Henan officials
punished for bribery, corruption, and other crimes that included tobacco smuggling
connected to Korea and Russia.
The former deputy manager of the provincial tobacco company, Liu
Yunzeng, also was expelled from the Communist Party and has been charged for his part in
embezzling RMB 1.19 million in public funds, the newspaper said. |
