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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

#111

Post by StillBored »

linkregister wrote: post #78
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…

This is a conventional view of culpability of corporate officers. It is, however, not the least bit aspirational or innovative. People demanding that CEOs be put in prison are for the most part misunderstanding the legal system, but they are also looking clear-eyed at a system that rewards extra-judicial risk-taking by corporate officers. The fines that come with negligence are typically undersized compared to the de…

Yes, reporting the misdeeds of contractors has been part of every companie's yearly legal training i've worked for in the past couple decades. The fact that those reports apparently weren't acted upon means that the upper mgmt is responsible.

Of course the whole thing puts companies in a bad place, the law itself is highly problematic. That is why whole thing just sounds like the usual US government trying to get its cut.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#112

Post by hinkley »

Zarathustra_ wrote: post #100

I will preface this by saying I am not defending Wal-Mart. However, it is somewhat a cost of doing business in many countries. I have spoken with close friends from both Brazil, Mexico, and India, and it is very much part of how business is done there. I have also heard from numerous acquaintances that this is the case in China, including people who did business there. This does perhaps not justify Wal-Mart's behavio…

I worked at a place where the anti-bribery training covered corner cases where US law not only allows for bribery but you can write it off as a business expense. I was pretty shocked by this.

> Regarding payments to foreign officials, the act draws a distinction between bribery and facilitation or "grease payments", which may be permissible under the FCPA, but may still violate local laws. The primary distinction is that grease payments or facilitation payments are made to an official to expedite his performance of the routine duties he is already bound to perform.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#113

Post by TomMckenny »

pmiller2 wrote: post #34
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't jail Walmart, but we should be able to jail its CEO. Perhaps if being CEO meant taking the risk of jail for the corporation's misdeeds, the job would actually be worth the ridiculous salary it pays out, and provide a much stronger incentive for the CEO to police illegal conduct internally.

Why not the entire C-suite and the board? Then you’d get some real accountability.

Strange this is so far outside the Overton window that it can be read as a joke.

In cases involving lower valued assets, the owner is almost always punishable: his dog bites you, it's his fault. His contractor lays bad wiring that burns down your house, it's his fault. His kids misdeeds are often legally his fault. And even if he loans his car to someone who crashes into it's legally his fault.

But behind a corporate shield, nothing is ever the owners fault. The more value the company has, the less possibility any owner is to receive legally blame. Not that there's much possibility in the first place.

This remarkable and thoroughly ingrained inconsistency does consistently benefit a certain category of person.

A very practice and effective solution would be to seize some chunk of the shares/value based on the size of the crime and auction them off. The proceeds going to victims or the like and weakening or removing irresponsible investors in favor of someone else. But this option is simply unthinkable and instead there's endless debate on the CEO's culpability.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#114

Post by rayiner »

StillBored wrote: post #103
paulcole wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Show me in the SEC filing where it suggests Wal-Mart’s executive leadership did anything like that: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1331-walmart-sec-set...

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#116

Post by throw_away »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #65
nerdponx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a speeding ticket. They are ahead.

It's 3.67% of that number - if you were a software engineer making $100,000 / year in the US, it would be like paying a speeding ticket of $3670, which is an order of magnitude greater than most speeding tickets in the US

$7.659B is the quarterly number, so divide your fine by four -> $917, which would still be quite an expensive speeding ticket, but within the max possible fines in my state.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#117

Post by StillBored »

rayiner wrote: post #110
StillBored wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But that is how this works, the Government has a hard time proving intent without a smoking gun. The Walmart execs are smart enough not to incriminate themselves with any emails/phone calls. So the government has a fairly strong case, but Walmart gets to plea agreement which wipes one of the main pieces of evidence (effectively the bookkeeping coverup) in exchange for paying the fine and closing the case.

Both sides are happy, no one at walmart goes to jail, they pay some trivial fine, and the prosecutors get a raise and a bullet point on their resume. The public gets to see justice in action...

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#118

Post by Zarathustra_ »

hinkley wrote: post #112
Zarathustra_ wrote: post #100

I will preface this by saying I am not defending Wal-Mart. However, it is somewhat a cost of doing business in many countries. I have spoken with close friends from both Brazil, Mexico, and India, and it is very much part of how business is done there. I have also heard from numerous acquaintances that this is the case in China, including people who did business there. This does perhaps not justify Wal-Mart's behavio…

I worked at a place where the anti-bribery training covered corner cases where US law not only allows for bribery but you can write it off as a business expense. I was pretty shocked by this. > Regarding payments to foreign officials, the act draws a distinction between bribery and facilitation or "grease payments", which may be permissible under the FCPA, but may still violate local laws. The primary distinction is…

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. That seems somewhat like a reasonable loop hole, though I can easily see how it could be abused. I appreciate the information.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#120

Post by rectang »

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.…

Companies are profit-seeking automatons. They evolve and change in response to their environment, but as entities they are not encumbered by human moral impulses or other embarrassments.

Humans operating within companies may experience moral impulses, but the company as an entity constantly urges its humans to act amorally in service of its profit-seeking.

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