Forum Post: walmart lies to stockholders, cheats and steals. oh so wholesome

will the government do any thing?? haha not likely.. this is the same kind of thinking that let the banks destroy the economy, there fore it follows that the government will look the other way

In less than a year, Mr. Lewis’s beefed-up team had doubled its caseload, to roughly 400 cases a year. Some executives grumbled that Mr. Lewis acted as if he still worked for the F.B.I., where he had once supervised major investigations. They accused him and his investigators of being overbearing, disruptive and naïve about the moral ambiguities of doing business abroad. They argued that Corporate Investigations should focus more on quietly “neutralizing” problems than on turning corrupt employees over to law enforcement.

Wal-Mart’s leaders had just witnessed the downside of that approach: in early 2005, the company went to the F.B.I. with evidence that the disgraced former vice chairman, Mr. Coughlin, had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars. The decision produced months of embarrassing publicity, especially when Mr. Coughlin claimed he had used the money to pay off union spies for Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart de Mexico executives were continuing to complain to Bentonville about the investigation. The protests “just never let up,” a person involved in the case said.

Another person familiar with the thinking of those overseeing the investigation said Wal-Mart would have reacted “like a chicken on a June bug” had the allegations concerned the United States. But some executives saw Mexico as a country where bribery was embedded in the business culture. It simply did not merit the same response.

“It’s a Mexican issue; it’s better to let it be a Mexican response,” the person said, describing the thinking of Wal-Mart executives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/business/at-wal-mart-in-mexico-a-bribe-inquiry-silenced.html?_r=1