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Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

nytimes.com

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Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#101

Post by reallydude »

paulcole wrote: post #88
mayneack wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Holding the CEO liable for employee misdeeds is like holding teachers responsible for teenagers getting into fights or having sex. This analogy doesn't hold for a lot of reasons, but the most obvious is that teachers don't get to choose their students. CEOs can (and should) fire employees that don't live up to their ethical responsibilities.

Should my local Walmart’s store manager be arrested because the cashier he hired was pocketing money from the till?

If a manager knows about an employee bribing a fire inspector, that's equivalent...since the topic is having a priori knowledge of bribery and failing to act (not the bribery itself) and not the simple case of wholesale theft, which is already a crime.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#102

Post by rectang »

rayiner wrote: post #61

I suspect people cynically demanding that CEOs be put in jail haven’t really dug into the facts of this or other FCPA cases. Holding the CEO liable for employee misdeeds is like holding teachers responsible for teenagers getting into fights or having sex. It’s a strong moral position to take (holding teachers accountable), but it’s wholly impractical and unfair. In a company with a million employees, it’s guaranteed…

> The touchstone of criminal law is a guilty mind.

Corporate structures are designed to obfuscate decisions by executives which lead to misdeeds by underlings. Carrie Tolstedt, who designed the Wells Fargo incentive systems which led to the creation of umpteen bogus accounts, ended her career tens of millions of dollars ahead, even after clawbacks.

Since it is impractical to hold individuals accountable because it is so difficult to see inside their minds, the collective corporate entity should be punished. Maleficent companies like Wells Fargo should be dismantled.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#103

Post by StillBored »

paulcole wrote: post #88
mayneack wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Holding the CEO liable for employee misdeeds is like holding teachers responsible for teenagers getting into fights or having sex. This analogy doesn't hold for a lot of reasons, but the most obvious is that teachers don't get to choose their students. CEOs can (and should) fire employees that don't live up to their ethical responsibilities.

Should my local Walmart’s store manager be arrested because the cashier he hired was pocketing money from the till?

What about if he knew the cashier was stealing the money, was intentionally ignoring it, and maybe even cooking the books a little, to cover for that employee? Does lit change if the manager was benefiting from the theft in some way?

That sounds a lot closer to what happened.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#104

Post by pravda »

mruts wrote: post #72

I live in Africa and pay bribes on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. It’s hard to do anything at all without bribes here, and I am certainly sympathetic of it. People who don’t have experience with 3rd world countriss often think it’s a big deal bribing someone. But it’s not, it’s a simple fact of life. I don’t really see anything wrong with a company doing it either. In fact, I kind of like paying bribes. Unlike i…

Sounds nice, in certain ways.

Which country?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#105

Post by pmiller2 »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #71
pmiller2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you hold an immortal, amoral entity that can’t be thrown in jail accountable, then? Trivial fines amounting to 0.1% of EBITDA are not the answer.

Like we do now: you hit it in the pocketbook with massive fines. Also, the CEO may not go to jail, but the local people actually doing the bribery should.

That’s the problem: we’re not doing that.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#106

Post by dahfizz »

mmanfrin wrote: post #82
rayiner wrote: post #61

I suspect people cynically demanding that CEOs be put in jail haven’t really dug into the facts of this or other FCPA cases. Holding the CEO liable for employee misdeeds is like holding teachers responsible for teenagers getting into fights or having sex. It’s a strong moral position to take (holding teachers accountable), but it’s wholly impractical and unfair. In a company with a million employees, it’s guaranteed…

No employee is breaking laws in an effort to further the objectives of a company in a vacuum. A CEO is absolutely not absolved of crimes committed in the name of the company, especially over the span of a decade.

> No employee is breaking the law...

That's absolutely absurd. Would a teenaged cashier be absolved of all guilt for murdering a troublesome customer? But the CEO should be held accountable?

If I literally cannot break a law as long as I'm working for a company, then why don't bank robbers get a job at Walmart first and claim robbing banks was for the benefit of Walmart? How could you ever convict anyone if the excuse "my boss implied that this might possibly be beneficial" gets you off Scott free?

People are always responsible for their own actions. As an extreme example, the nazis were all "just following orders". Do you think they are guilty and should be held accountable for their actions, even though someone else asked them to do what they did?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#107

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

pmiller2 wrote: post #105
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like we do now: you hit it in the pocketbook with massive fines. Also, the CEO may not go to jail, but the local people actually doing the bribery should.

That’s the problem: we’re not doing that.

Per the friendly article, Walmart has spent over $1 billion total on this (fine, legal fees, investigation), which is a noticeable number even by megacorp standards.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#108

Post by hinkley »

rectang wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #61

I suspect people cynically demanding that CEOs be put in jail haven’t really dug into the facts of this or other FCPA cases. Holding the CEO liable for employee misdeeds is like holding teachers responsible for teenagers getting into fights or having sex. It’s a strong moral position to take (holding teachers accountable), but it’s wholly impractical and unfair. In a company with a million employees, it’s guaranteed…

> The touchstone of criminal law is a guilty mind. Corporate structures are designed to obfuscate decisions by executives which lead to misdeeds by underlings. Carrie Tolstedt, who designed the Wells Fargo incentive systems which led to the creation of umpteen bogus accounts, ended her career tens of millions of dollars ahead, even after clawbacks. Since it is impractical to hold individuals accountable because it is…

Also, narcisists and sociopaths don't feel guilt the way the rest of us do.

And what do you find disproportionately represented in the board room?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#109

Post by pmiller2 »

zaroth wrote: post #89
pmiller2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you hold an immortal, amoral entity that can’t be thrown in jail accountable, then? Trivial fines amounting to 0.1% of EBITDA are not the answer.

Companies (even purely algorithmic ones) are not amoral because they are directly impacted by the ethical and unethical behaviors that they choose. So they are not “unconcerned” with the morality of their actions. Versus for example “technology” which is amoral, because it is itself a tool unaware of the purpose for which it is even being used. Of course companies are also not immortal, companies “die” all the time.…

.1% of EBITDA is a “cost of doing business” if it makes them .1% + X. Even if it doesn’t, it’s an annoyance. It doesn’t hurt any more than you or me getting a parking fine. You have to make it really, truly hurt the bottom line, because that’s the only language they speak.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#110

Post by rayiner »

StillBored wrote: post #97
rayiner wrote: post #61

I suspect people cynically demanding that CEOs be put in jail haven’t really dug into the facts of this or other FCPA cases. Holding the CEO liable for employee misdeeds is like holding teachers responsible for teenagers getting into fights or having sex. It’s a strong moral position to take (holding teachers accountable), but it’s wholly impractical and unfair. In a company with a million employees, it’s guaranteed…

From the article: "But even as employees frequently raised alarm, the company’s top leaders did little to prevent Walmart from being involved in bribery and corruption schemes." Which means the "top leaders" knew of the problem, and choose to ignore it. It would be a different story if they put real effort into self policing and there was evidence they pushed the guilty contractors/etc but again: "The plea agreement,…

So the part right before your quote says: “For more than a decade, Walmart used middlemen to make dubious payments to governments around the globe in order to open new locations, United States prosecutors and securities regulators said in a settlement agreement on Thursday.”

The parts you quote are the NYT reporting the prosecutor’s allegations as fact. But the passage you quoted also explains everything you need to know about why nobody went to jail.

“The plea agreement, which was technically based on the company’s improper record keeping....”

Wait—so Wal-Mart did all these bad things (they must have, the NYT reported them as fact), but the plea agreement is “technically” based on “improper record keeping?”

If you actually read the facts section of the SEC submission linked from the article, it’s a real snooze fest. There were issues here and there, people were fired, several rounds of compliance programs were instituted, etc. But little to substantiate the prosecution narrative recounted as fact by the NYT. There is a reason Wal-Mart spent a billion dollars investigating this case but the government agreed to settle for less than $300 million—once prosecutors dug in, there wasn’t much of a story there.

I’ll also add:

> As an individual citizen, if I intentionally failed to file my taxes properly, report crimes I knew of, or even fire a housekeeper or other low level employee I knew had been committing crimes that benefited me you can be sure I would be getting more than the equivalent of a parking fine

The IRS’s response to people who intentionally don’t file tax returns—unless the conduct is really outrageous—almost always is to just tell them to file, and pay the deficiency with interest. Except in special circumstances, such as lawyers reporting on other lawyers, ordinary individuals don’t have an obligation to report crimes they’re aware of. Finally, unless it can be argued that you encouraged your housekeeper to commit crimes, or somehow facilitated them, I don’t think there would be anything illegal about not firing him either. Like, you probably can’t criminally prosecute someone for accepting gifts from someone they know is a drug dealer and purchased the gifts with ill-gotten money.

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