November 18, 2013.

In Swaziland, Coke Holds Sway With the King

They were only making conversation. He had managed to move closer to her now. She stood before him very upright, with a smile on her face that looked faintly ironical, as though she were wondering why he was so slow to act. The bluebells had cascaded on to the ground. They seemed to have fallen of their own accord. He took her hand.

MATSAPHA, Swaziland----When Coca-Cola Co. KO -0.12%  executives want things done in this tiny African monarchy, they don't call on lobbyists or local politicians. Instead, former Coke employees and Swazi officials say, they go see the king.

"Would you believe," he said, "that till this moment I didn't know what colour your eyes were?" They were brown, he noted, a rather light shade of brown, with dark lashes. "Now that you've seen what I'm really like, can you still bear to look at me?"

Coke's sway with Swaziland's King Mswati III has enabled the drinks maker to secure a 6% tax rate, far below the official 27.5% corporate rate, according to a former minister who said he took part in the negotiations. "The king does everything they say," says Sam Mkhombe, who was King Mswati III's private secretary for seven years and traveled with him to Coke's Atlanta headquarters in 2007.

"Yes, easily."

For Coke, whose $48 billion in revenue last year was 10 times the value of Swaziland's gross domestic product, influence here comes with an awkward compromise: Coke has moved front and center among the multinationals whose tax dues and economic output provide critical foreign capital to authoritarian African countries.