Report: Wal-Mart hushed up bribery campaign to build stores across Mexico
Report: Wal-Mart hushed up bribery campaign to build stores across Mexico
Published: Sunday, April 22, 2012, 2:20 AM Updated: Sunday, April 22, 2012, 2:25 AM
By The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. hushed up a vast bribery campaign that top executives of its Mexican subsidiary carried out to build stores across that country, according to a published report.
The New York Times reported Saturday that Wal-Mart failed to notify law enforcement officials even after its own investigators found evidence of millions of dollars in bribes. The newspaper said the company shut down its internal probe despite a report by its lead investigator that Mexican and U.S. laws likely were violated.
The bribery campaign was reported to have first come to the attention of senior executives at Wal-Mart in 2005, when a former executive of its largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico, provided extensive details of a bribery campaign it had orchestrated to win market dominance.
The Mexican executive, previously the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits, said in emails and follow-up conversations that Wal-Mart de Mexico paid bribes to obtain permits throughout the country in its rush to build stores nationwide, the Times reported.
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http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/04/report_wal-mart_hushed_up_brib.html
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Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart
After Top-Level Struggle
Confronted with evidence of widespread corruption in Mexico, top Wal-Mart executives focused more on damage control than on rooting out wrongdoing, an examination by The New York Times found.
By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: April 21, 2012
MEXICO CITY — In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.
The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico.
Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”
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Neither American nor Mexican law enforcement officials were notified. None of Wal-Mart de Mexico’s leaders were disciplined. Indeed, its chief executive, Eduardo Castro-Wright, identified by the former executive as the driving force behind years of bribery, was promoted to vice chairman of Wal-Mart in 2008. Until this article, the allegations and Wal-Mart’s investigation had never been publicly disclosed.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/business/at-wal-mart-in-mexico-a-bribe-inquiry-silenced.html
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Last Updated: Friday, 15 October, 2004, 16:56 GMT 17:56 UK
Mexican wrath over Wal-Mart store
Mexican writers and artists have joined a campaign to stop the US retailer, Wal-Mart, from opening a store near the famous ruins of Teotihuacan.
In an open letter to President Vicente Fox, the group says the store should be built further away from the ruins.
Those who signed the letter include painter Francisco Toledo and novelist Laura Esquivel.
Correspondents say as the store is almost complete, the campaign is unlikely to succeed.
"Teotihuacan is for Mexicans our greatest cultural heritage, an expression of our history and our identity as a people and nation," the writers and artists said in the letter.
More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3747580.stm
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Mexican Citizens Protest Wal-Mart Near Ancient Pyramids
| Written by admin| Updated on Sep 13, 2004
A citizens group has filed legal appeals and staged demonstrations in an attempt to stop Wal-Mart from building a megastore near the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan, about 30 miles northeast of Mexico City.
The massive store, which would carry the logo of Bodega Aurrera, one of Wal-Mart’s Mexican subsidiaries, would be visible from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, the largest Pre-Columbian stone pyramid in the Western Hemisphere.
Teotihuacan was a thriving city of 150,000 people about 2,500 years ago. At its core is a large religious and ceremonial complex, which includes several temples, the Avenue of the Dead, and the pyramids of the sun and moon. No one knows why, but around 700 AD, Teotihuacan’s population disappeared. The ancient city was discovered and named by the Aztecs about 600 years later.
Today, only the core religious complex is fully protected. Wal-Mart is building on farmland in a "buffer" zone adjacent to the protected area, less than a mile from the Pyramid of the Sun. Wal-Mart’s private archeologist insists that only a few isolated artifacts have been found on the construction site. The company says an unearthed altar will be displayed under Plexiglas in the store’s parking lot.
More:
http://www.ilsr.org/retail/news/mexican-citizens-protest-walmart-near-ancient-pyramids/