WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st June, 2019) Walmart, one of the world's largest retailers, has agreed to pay $282 million to settle civil and criminal charges of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for failing to monitor its global operations during a decade of rapid growth, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Thursday.
"Walmart agreed to pay more than $144 million to settle the SEC's charges and approximately $138 million to resolve parallel criminal charges by the US Department of Justice for a combined total of more than $282 million," the SEC said in a press release.
Walmart failed to sufficiently investigate or mitigate certain anti-corruption risks and allowed subsidiaries in Brazil, China, India, and Mexico to employ third-party intermediaries who made payments to foreign government officials without reasonable assurances that they complied with the FCPA, the release said.
The SEC's order details several instances when Walmart planned to implement proper compliance and training only to put those plans on hold or otherwise allow deficient internal accounting controls to persist even in the face of red flags and corruption allegations.
Business publications and trade groups consistently rank Walmart as the No. 1 US retailer, despite gains by Amazon in recent years.
