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.

© Scoop Media