CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Waxman Cummings Say Wal-Mart Not Cooperating on FCPA Probe
26 Corporate Crime Reporter 25, June 12, 2012
Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-California) and Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) want Wal-Mart to give it all up. Wal-Mart doesn’t want to. The result: conflict.
For a couple of months now, ever since the New York Times ran its front page expose of Wal-Mart bribery in Mexico, Waxman and Cummings have been pounding the company to turn over documents relating to its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) compliance program.
To no avail. So, today, Waxman and Cummings sent off a letter to Wal-Mart CEO Michael T. Duke.
“Although you stated during a recent shareholders meeting that Wal-Mart is ‘doing everything we can to get to the bottom of the matter,’ you have not provided us with the information we requested,” Waxman and Cummings wrote.
“Specifically, you have provided us with no documents, you have declined to allow any Wal-Mart employees to brief our staffs about the allegations, and you have failed to respond to our request to speak with Maritza Munich, a key figure in the investigation,” they wrote. “Wal-Mart's actions to date significantly inhibit our ability to investigate these allegations.”
Instead, Wal-Mart sent lawyers from its outside law firms – Greenberg Taurig and Akin Gump – to handle Waxman and Cummings.
“On May 21 , 2012, a month after our initial request, the company's outside counsel provided us with a general briefing on Wal-Mart's program to comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ‘going forward,’” Waxman and Cummings wrote. “This briefing was not conducted by Wal-Mart officials, but by attorneys from the law firms of Greenberg Traurig and Akin Gump. These attorneys declined to answer any questions about Wal-Mart' s potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. They explained that they were hired in 2011 and had no substantive knowledge of company actions relating to the Mexico bribery allegations.”
During the May 21 briefing, Wal-Mart's outside counsels stated that they were retained to conduct a broad review of your anti-corruption policies and operations in Mexico, Brazil, and China.
The attorneys said that as a result of this review, they are recommending that Wal-Mart also evaluate its operations in India and South Africa.
“Wal-Mart' s attorneys identified these five countries – which they referred to as 'first tier' countries – because they represented regions 'where risk was the greatest.'”
“On June 13, Wal-Mart's outside counsel will be providing our staffs with a briefing on the investigative protocols the company used to examine the bribery allegations in Mexico.”
“However, we have been informed that once again, no Wal-Mart officials would be present at this briefing,” Waxman and Cummings wrote. “We ask that you reconsider your position and allow Wal-Mart officials to speak with us directly about the serious allegations that the company may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In particular, we ask that company officials come prepared to discuss fully the role Wal-Mart officials may have played in exposing or covering up bribery allegations and whether the alleged improper conduct was part of a broader problem with Wal-Mart's internal controls.”
Corporate Crime Reporter
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