Financial Transparency Coalition

In April, The New York Times published the revealing story about Wal-Mart’s alleged bribery activity involving its largest subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. Now, nearly a month and a half since the article was published in the NY Times, many shareholders of Wal-Mart have displayed dissatisfaction. In a shareholders meeting on Friday, June 1, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a vote for the Wal-Mart Board of Directors illustrated the rising disapproval of Wal-Mart’s actions.

Felix Salmon, always someone with an interesting take on issues, takes a look at Wal-Mart's ethics policy. Given what came out in the New York Times this weekend about Wal-Mart's alleged $24 million bribery and cover-up scandal, you might expect Wal-Mart to have a toothless and empty ethics policy for high-level employees. The reality appears to be different. As Felix Salmon explains, an employee named Julie Roehm, senior enough to handle the search for a company to handle a billion dollar account, was fired for allowing that company to buy her dinner.

Over the weekend, the New York Times alleged that Wal-Mart deliberately hid investigations into bribery practices at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private sector employer with currently 209,000 employees. Allegedly there is a paper trail that includes hundreds of suspect payments worth more 24 million USD in total.

WASHINGTON, DC – Earlier today more than 30 civil society and business groups, including human rights and anticorruption organizations, sent a letter to every member of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate expressing their opposition to any efforts to amend the world’s flagship anticorruption legislation, the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).