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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

#81

Post by Para2016 »

mayneack wrote: post #74
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…

> 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.

How many times have you been personally hired or fired by a CEO?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#82

Post by mmanfrin »

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.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#83

Post by geofft »

salawat wrote: post #60
geofft wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human beings are allowed to organize for the purposes of political action and whether or not they decide to form a corporation doesn't matter because "corporation" isn't a constitutional concept Sure it does - if I am killed by a natural person due to negligence, the state can imprison the person who killed me. If I am killed by a corporation due to negligence, the state generally does not imprison any individual,…

Unfortunately, the way that corporations can own other corporations would render this moot, or at most, a mere matter of paperwork. Control of corporate assets would fall to the next highest "Corporation" in the chain, or, and this is a big or, if you went the more extreme route of forcing the assets/business into the stewardship of the State for the imprisonment term, the "life" of the corporation would need to cont…

> if you went the more extreme route of forcing the assets/business into the stewardship of the State for the imprisonment term, the "life" of the corporation would need to continue as normal to meet the obligations the Corporation has toward vendors/shareholders, otherwise, they are out of what is rightfully theirs "without due process".

This doesn't apply to imprisonment of humans, right? If I go to prison tomorrow, my employer is deprived of my labor, my skills, and my knowledge without due process and through no fault of their own. Sure, they don't have to pay me, but they're also not going to get back their investment in training me and the institutional knowledge I have of how stuff happens at my company. (I am at-will, as it happens, but I'm pretty sure this is not different if I had a fixed-term contract.)

If you make a deal with someone who goes to prison, and they can't execute on that deal, it's your own problem that you made a bad choice of deal partner. Sure, you can sue for breach of contract, but it won't actually get them to do the thing you were hoping they'd do anytime soon. Why is it different when the corporation is the person with whom you made that deal?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#84

Post by heavenlyblue »

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…

Your opinion would make more sense if teacher’s yearly bonus would be directly sized based on how much unprotected sex his students are having.

No, he can’t make them have less sex if they want to. Yes he also gets paid more if they do.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#86

Post by rayiner »

Despegar wrote: post #75
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…

So are you just against FCPA cases in general then? I think it's one of the most important laws in the US and its extraterritoriality reduces corruption everywhere in the world.

I think the FCPA is tremendously important. But I don’t believe in bending basic principles of criminal law just because we’re mad at corporate CEOs.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#88

Post by paulcole »

mayneack wrote: post #74
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…

> 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?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#89

Post by zaroth »

pmiller2 wrote: post #66
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…

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.

However, companies certainly can and do act unethically, particularly when there are economic incentives to do so.

A 0.1% of EBITDA fine to Walmart would be hundreds of millions of dollars. They would certainly care about that, and they likely have teams of people who work to ensure compliance for a whole host of regulations which could result in fines at that order of magnitude.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#90

Post by StillBored »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #69
StillBored wrote: post #18

So, now its the US governments chance to hold out its hand. These are so trivial for a company like Walmart, and no-one is being individually held responsible. So it just looks like an official bit of us gov bribery, just like the fee's to avoid the security line at the airport. Cloak it in a bit of legal mumble jumbo and the us government gets its payout too. Frankly though too, these foreign anti-bribery laws seem…

What comprises the “mind” of a corporation? I would argue that the board and senior officers make up that mind and it’s their failure to demand or instill strong ethics allowed for these crimes to occur.

In this case, yes that appears to be what happened. The low level employees reportedly raised the issues.

From TFA:

"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 is why no-one is going to jail, if it were just a low level employee you can bet they would be charged/fired and jailed. But since it went high in the mgmt chain, they likely can't just pin it on someone. The records likely got looked at, discussed off the record, and then got ignored without anyone's fingerprints on them.

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