Americas

House Democrats claim Wal-Mart CEO knew of bribery allegations

by Julian Pecquet - 01/10/13 5:10 PM ET

House
Democrats on Thursday pressed their probe into allegations Wal-Mart
bribed Mexican officials to expand south of the border, releasing emails
they said suggested the company lied about when it first learned of the
corruption claims.

The top Democrats on the House Oversight and Energy and
Commerce committees launched their probe in
April following a New York Times report detailing the corruption allegations.

Wal-Mart
has since said that its executives in the United States were not immediately informed of the allegations when they first surfaced almost a decade ago, but the lawmakers
say they’ve obtained internal corporate emails showing otherwise.

{mosads}“These
documents and emails call into question your company’s statement that
‘[n]one of the associates we have interviewed, including people
responsible for real estate projects in Mexico during this time period,
recall any mention of bribery allegations related to this store,’ ”
Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter
to Wal-Mart CEO Michael Duke. “It would be a serious matter if the CEO
of one of our nation’s largest companies failed to address allegations
of a bribery scheme.”

Walmart however says the lawmakers have their timeline wrong.

A spokeswoman for the company says Walmart stands by its earlier statement, which meant to convey that Walmart officials were not aware of the corruption allegations when protests first broke out against its stores in Mexico in 2004. The internal documents obtained by the lawmakers show Duke was
made aware of the allegations by General Counsel Thomas Mars a year later, on Oct.
15, 2005.

“The letter from Congressmen Waxman and Cummings leaves the wrong impression that our public statements are contradicted by the information they released today,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan. “The fact is, the chronology of events relied upon in their letter is inaccurate. The company statement referenced in their letter that appeared in the December, 2012 New York Times story focused on events in 2004. The emails attached to the letter were sent almost a year later.”

The emails
document that the company’s Mexican subsidiary paid hundreds of
thousands of dollars to both federal and local Mexican officials to
approve Wal-Mart stores, notably
near the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacán. The emails identify Graco
Ramirez, a former congressman with the leftist Party of the Democratic
Revolution, who is now governor of the south-central state of Morelos,
as “the main contact person to negotiate such contribution on the part
of the government.”

Wal-Mart dismissed the latest batch of emails,
saying they provided no new details and insisting the company was
cooperating with Congress and federal agencies investigating the claims.

“There
is no new information in the letter released today by Congressman
Waxman and Congressman Cummings. This information has been part of the
company’s ongoing investigation of potential violations of the U.S.
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for more than a year and has been the
subject of two New York Times articles,” Buchanan said. “We have provided extensive documentation
to the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission,
including the documents released today, as part of our ongoing
cooperation with the appropriate law enforcement agencies on this
matter.

“We want to provide members of Congress with whatever
appropriate information we can to help them and we have already provided
committee staff with multiple briefings. We are exploring ways to make
additional information available and are committed to doing whatever we
can to appropriately address their requests, consistent with maintaining
the integrity of the ongoing federal investigation,” Buchanan added.
“We are committed to having a strong and effective global
anti-corruption program everywhere we operate and taking appropriate
action for any instance of non-compliance.”

This post was updated at 2:15 p.m. with comment from Walmart