Financial Transparency Coalition

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.