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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

#131

Post by salmo »

I'm sorry, It's an unpopular opinion to hold, but the overseas bribery thing is a ridiculous standard to hold. [These opinions are just mine, and while I have them as opinions I would never act on them as a representative of my company, not that I would ever have the chance, and I don't work for Walmart]

Over the course of human history, bribery has been the norm. I would dare to say that today, by population, it is the norm. It has obvious dirtiness in the US and Western Europe. And the US and Western Europe have tried to force this view on other nations, which have created laws that they don't pursue or prosecute.

But criminalizing actions performed in another country based on morality in the US feels equally dirty. I don't mind the US handing evidence over to another sovereign nation for them to deal with, but prosecuting a crime on another countries soil over something that may not be seen as a crime in that country just doesn't make sense.

I know, Walmart is "evil". It's southern US, and hits rural towns, takes advantage of US laws at scale (which would have been taken advantage of in small chunks that added up to the near total), etc.

But, Amazon which is worse on the Walmart issues (low wages, overworked employees, stressed vendors, killing jobs) and then adds on to it traditional "antitrust" problems of vertical integration, and somehow gets a pass in our community because they're a tech company and "we" shop there. Can we get past the rhetoric and move on to the actual arguments?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#132

Post by 2000andlate »

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…

I refuse to believe that the solution to this is to throw our hands up and just accept that things like this will continue to happen. If large, multibillion-dollar corporations have such a hard time with complying with the law, and if we can’t seem to find a solution to that, then maybe we have to question the utility that these entities actually serve modern society. Maybe they shouldn’t exist at all if they’re hotbeds or criminal activity.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#133

Post by hanniabu »

throw_away wrote: post #116
ghufran_syed wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It kind of would be like getting a ticket when you account the total cost with your insurance going up and that staying on your record for ~4 years.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#134

Post by Gibbon1 »

will_brown wrote: post #50
Gibbon1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously corporations have the right to pay fines with other peoples money instead of being jailed or executed. People of flesh and blood don't have those rights. Compare Walmart committing bribery to me attempting to bribe my way out of speeding ticket.

>Compare Walmart committing bribery to me attempting to bribe my way out of speeding ticket. But that is how the ticket industry works...you get the ticket, hire a lawyer, the lawyer “negotiates” a deal to plead no contest in exchange for no points and a lower $ penalty or at your option take traffic school ( a local private company that no doubt “bribes” its way in to those chushy exclusive county government contrac…

Read harder. You try to bribe a cop, you get arrested and you go to jail. If you have a buttload of money you can avoid jail. If not, you serve time. Then you are branded a criminal, forever.

Unlike Walmart which gets to stay a corporation in good standing. And it's executives who suffer no personal harm.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#135

Post by hanniabu »

pmiller2 wrote: post #38
fallingfrog wrote: post #24

“Culture is the foundation of everything we do at Walmart. We define culture as our values in action.. Service to the customer Respect for the individual Strive for excellence Act with integrity” -Wal Mart’s horseshit values statement, the same as the value statement of every other corporation. Why does every company bother doing this again?

Pretty much every corporation only has one value: make money for execs and shareholders. Everything and everyone else is secondary.

Everything else is a facade

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#136

Post by dahfizz »

pmiller2 wrote: post #37
jammygit wrote: post #7

Is 280M just a speeding ticket? I wonder if they are met ahead or behind because of the policy.

Walmart’s EBITDA for the quarter ending April 30, 2019 was $7.659B. I’d call $280M a very minor annoyance.

That's roughly ~3.5% of their income. If I took 3.5% of your income, you would be much more than minorly annoyed.

You can make the argument that 3.5% isn't high enough, but it's not nothing.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#137

Post by lasky »

I try to be careful with what is defined as bribery.

It’s very easy to prance around on a high horse and cast out moral judgements when you’ve never had to open offices internationally.

It sounds like no doubt some pockets were unapologetically made fat. It also sounds like they didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. I wonder if that’s because their then line of thinking was “paying to pay” is simply normalized in business.

As I think about where the boundary is drawn for bribery, it’s interesting to see “offering cars and computers to governments” is framed as bribery, while somehow what local municipalities are demanding from giant tech co’s (ie Mt View / Google) is not.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#138

Post by freddie_mercury »

TomMckenny wrote: post #113
pmiller2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't quite follow what you're arguing.

Are you saying that anyone who owns Wal-Mart stock should go to jail? That's who the owners of Wal-Mart are.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#139

Post by CMCDragonkai »

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…

I see this happen in Western institutions as well where if you want faster processing you have to pay some extra fee.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#140

Post by dahfizz »

mmanfrin wrote: post #123
dahfizz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 excus…

> murdering a troublesome customer This furthers the interests of the company?

Getting rid of a troublesome customer that wastes employees time and scares off other customers is definitely in the interest of the company.
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