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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

#201

Post by Nasrudith »

pmiller2 wrote: post #31
eindiran wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Wikipedia page: "Although the decision does not address "corporate personhood," a long-established judicial and constitutional concept, much attention has focused on that issue."[0] "How should one interpret [the case] then?" Recognize that Citizen's United is _not_ about corporate personhood, and actually read what the case was about. The number of times I've heard people making snarky remarks about Citizen…

Except corporations don’t have equal protection under law. They have more protection than individuals because they’re a device for absolving individuals of personal liability. The only penalty we seem to want to subject them to for any kind of wrongdoing is a fine, which is often not enough to deter the activity that caused them to receive said fine. We need to make fines meaningful, start holding C-level execs perso…

Personally I suspect the corporate death penalty will be even more worthless than the actual one for deterrence. The corporate shield isn't supposed to apply to criminal conduct for participants in the first place.

Any investor should already treat them as disposable sources of revenue so crooked business actors would do the same. It would be like sentencing the gun to the death penalty and letting the robber go free. Instead pursue all those with actual power and liability who don't do the right thing and leave those who did alone as possible (it shouldn't stop enforcement) or reward them.

Otherwise they will be encouraged to "3S" (shoot, shovel, and shut up) their problems instead of cooperating or reporting.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#202

Post by cbush06 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #14
ebg13 wrote: post #10

> Walmart was able to negotiate a lower fine after President Trump, who had previously criticized the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, took office. Can anyone explain a reason why someone who isn't a cad might not agree with the FCPA (ie. for reasons that aren't "money good, ethics bad")? This isn't a dig at Trump. I just don't understand the law well enough to know how angry I should be.

I will just play devil's advocate. Sometimes different cultures have very different ideas about what is an ethical way of doing things. If you're passing judgement on Walmart here, I think you're also passing judgement on Brazilian culture. Of course, you're welcome to do so, and I might even agree with you. But if you want to fine Walmart for doing things the "Brazilian way" while operating in Brazil, then I think i…

Agreed.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#203

Post by cbush06 »

Bostonian wrote: post #85

In a corrupt country, paying bribes to get licenses and permits is often necessary for the copmany and beneficial for the citizens. India was known for having a "License Raj", which has done far more to keep India poor than any foreign company.

Thank you.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#205

Post by ex-aws-now-goog »

StillBored wrote: post #117
rayiner wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My dude/tte, please look at who you're trying to educate about law.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#206

Post by will_brown »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #134
will_brown wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Read harder? Don’t resort to ad hominem attacks because you don’t know or understand the law.

Walmart allegedly bribed foreign officials they didn’t try to bribe the “cops” for bringing the bribery charges. Although you can’t distinguish the legal difference, it doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

Executives do go to jail quite regularly for bribery and companies can and are judicially dissolved also.

For example I was in Las Vegas during the Shot Show when the FBI rolled right into the convention center and arrested executives/VPs of Smith and Wesson for bribing an undercover FBI agent, posing as a African delegate, for a large government contract.

Or how about the VW executives arrested (and convicted) for the emissions scandal?

Or the drug company Executives and CEO recently charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and defraud the US?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#207

Post by c3534l »

ionised wrote: post #183
c3534l wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still making the mistake that legal personhood is literally being a person. People can go to prison. Abstract concepts cannot.

Then how can you apply rights usually reserved for people to a abstract concept?

You don't. That was the point of my post. Citizens United didn't grant corporations the rights of people and "corporate personhood" doesn't mean that anyway.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#208

Post by mruts »

blub wrote: post #163
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…

Can't tell if joking or antisocial. Especially the line about "I can really just do anything I please. I have money, so it's all good." Obviously if everyone with money can do whatever they want, the trust in institutions plummets and more and more people start cheating, so one ends up with a society of cheaters who think it's normal to bribe.

I'm not arguing that it's not a problem. I'm just saying it's good for me, and I like it. I think it's entirely possible to believe something is suboptimal and wrong while also being happy that it benefits me.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#209

Post by geofft »

c3534l wrote: post #207
ionised wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how can you apply rights usually reserved for people to a abstract concept?

You don't. That was the point of my post. Citizens United didn't grant corporations the rights of people and "corporate personhood" doesn't mean that anyway.

Nobody is talking about Citizens United (other than the people dragging it into the conversation just to point out that Citizens United is irrelevant).

Corporations already have the rights of people, because when corporations do crimes, the corporation, and not the people who constitute the corporation, is held legally responsible. What we are objecting to is that corporations are exempt from forms of punishment that are applied to natural persons. Either figure out how to make the punishment apply to corporations, remove that form of punishment from consideration for natural persons, or ignore the corporation for legal purposes and punish the humans behind the abstraction layer. It's pretty straightforward.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#210

Post by kenned3 »

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 thought part of the reason for the enormouse CEO paychecks was they were ultimatly responsible for things like this?

After they took the money, they want to say "even thought i was paid to run the company, i had no idea this was going on?" not sure it works that way.

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