Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes • Hacker News Board

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#91

Post by shkkmo » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:44 AM UTC

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…

> But if you want to fine Walmart for doing things the "Brazilian way"

Is this "Brazilian way" legal in Brazil? If so, there is a decent chance that it is allowed under the FCPA.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#92

Post by geofft » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:45 AM UTC

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…

Why do you think that there's no guilty mind here?

I do agree that there is a distinction between a company committing a crime because some individual is screwing things up against the policy of the company and a company committing a crime because it sets out to commit crimes. I don't agree that because a company has no brain that it cannot have a guilty mind. If it incentivizes thousands of its employees to do illegal things, including by putting them in situations where illegal behavior is usual and expecting the usual results, that's on the company.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#93

Post by pasquinelli » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:45 AM UTC

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 are the people demanding CEOs to be jailed cynical? I'm really confused by why you chose that word.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#94

Post by geofft » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:47 AM UTC

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?

That example isn't relevant here because a cashier pocketing money hurts the company.

The behavior you want to penalize the company for is a cashier quietly doing something illegal that helps the company - and the only reason they would do that is if the company is expecting performance out of them that is difficult to achieve without illegal behavior.

A classic example of this is the Wells Fargo fake account scandal. Managers who set impossible quotas for their salespeople, such that the salespeople felt compelled to steal their customers identities, should be arrested for identity theft, yes.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#95

Post by Krasnol » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:49 AM UTC

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…

But isn't the main reason they get all the big money that huuuge responsibility?

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#96

Post by malloreon » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

If your company is too big to keep its own employees from committing crimes, it's too big.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#97

Post by StillBored » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

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, which was technically related to the company’s improper record-keeping, ... Federal regulators said Walmart looked the other way as subsidiaries on three continents paid millions of dollars to middlemen who helped the company obtain permits and other government approvals from July 2000 to April 2011."

Which sounds more like a coverup to me.

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.

That is why people are demanding someone be held responsible. It seems those that are reaping the rewards and knew of the crimes are simply being given a free pass.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#98

Post by wilg » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

khazhou wrote: post #73

patentatt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gp comment doesn’t seem to mention citizens united ... why bring it up in response to a comment about corporate personhood? It is almost completely non sequitur

Almost every modern reference to "Corporations are now people!" is a callback to Citizens United. If the commenter I replied to is not aware of and was not referring to that, I apologize. But... he probably was. A simple search for "corporation are people" or "corporate personhood" will bring up articles that immediately and extensively focus on Citizens United.

And/or to Mitt Romney saying "corporations are people, my friend" which happened around the same time and this was a big political topic. The idea of corporate personhood became popularized around this time.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#99

Post by hinkley » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:54 AM UTC

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…

It's the Rumpelstiltskin scenario. If someone is spinning gold from proverbial flax you should goddamn well ask how they're doing it before you start agreeing to things.

Or put less fancifully, receiving stolen goods is a crime. Where's the line between 'too good to be true' and assuming willful ignorance in a corruption case?

There's also the case of the executives claiming responsibility for all of the success of the company. If the success is theirs, not ours, then the rest of us don't want them to cherry pick. The failure and corruption is theirs too. It's a package deal.

If you want to talk about fixing the quasi-feudalist state we are moving toward and start thinking of companies more like a team, working together, then I'd love to discuss shared responsibilities as part of that reconciliation.

Re: Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

#100

Post by Zarathustra_ » Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 2:55 AM UTC

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 behavior, but it provides some context and reminds us that companies (even those the size of Wal-Mart) have few options. Besides, promising to bring jobs to a certain area leads to more tax revenue, which in turn leads to fatter pockets for politicians. We delude ourselves to pretend we are perfect.

However, America has the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which does mean this could be more complicated. We recognize that someone else jumping off a bridge does not justify our doing so. And though we still have problems at home, we do try to police them. When a corruption scandal breaks, politicians usually are forced out of office; compared to many other places, this is good.