Whistleblower Documents Lead Shareholder to Sue Walmart Over Lack of Transparency

Posted on August 20, 2012 by jway

The Walmart bribery and cover-up scandal saga continues. Yet another shareholder has sued the company and its Board of Directors in relation to allegations that the company’s Mexican subsidiary paid $24 million in bribes to officials and top executives covered it up. Last Monday, the Indiana Electrical Workers Pension Trust Fund, which is owned by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, filed a complaint against Walmart in order to gain access to internal documents related to the bribery allegations.

According to Reuters, the lawsuit “…said the company had made a ‘woefully deficient’ production of documents following an earlier out-of-court demand. What documents were produced were ‘so heavily redacted,’ or blacked out, they were nearly worthless, the pension fund said.”

Reuters goes on to report that, according to the IBEW’s complaint, “an unidentified whistleblower had mailed documents to the fund’s lawyers ‘substantiating numerous facts’ in the Times’ article related to bribes paid by Walmart de Mexico.”

The latest shareholder lawsuit, one of many filed by investors in relation to the bribery allegations, comes on the heels of a revelation last week that Walmart has been uncooperative with a Congressional investigation into the allegations. Lawmakers say that they have reason to believe the company may have also engaged in money laundering and tax evasion.

Walmart recently announced that it spent $34 million in expenses related to the Mexican bribery scandal in the three month period ending July 31. The company has slowed its plans for international growth. Its share of retail sales in Mexico has also declined steadily since the Mexican bribery allegations were made public in April of this year.

This post was written by Rebecca Cassler.

Comments

  • http://www.facebook.com/robert.snodgrass.338 Robert Snodgrass

    Hello, I have been trying forever to get some help with this matter, but nobody seems to care at all. There is a very seriuos problem of fear of reporting unfair labor practice in Walmart. I worked there for almost 10-years with an excellent work history, up until we got a new store manager who was extremely verbally abusive to employees incuding a mentally handicapped female who he would bash until she was hysterically crying. You could hear her wailing across the store, and when I suggested to employees that we report it they said they were afraid they would be fired. I said we have rights and laws in this country and we do not need to be afraid to report abuse, especially of the handicapped. They said I was naive, and that everyone knows Walmart controls the government with its money and lawyers and prides themselves on being able to get away with anything they want, I had more faith and trust in our system than that, and i began reporting the abuse to upper management. Before you know it the abusive manager started letting me know he was angry with my reporting him and fired me. That was just the begining of the mess. I went to the NLRB and they filed A charge on walmart for firing me for engaging in protected activity.
    Walmart then forced me to drop the charge before they would reinstate my job, and then harshly retaliated on me in many ways including false write ups and 2 more wrongful terminations shortly after i returned. When I went back to the NLRB as they had told me to do should this occur Walamrt gave perjurious testimony to the NLRB and told numerous extremely slanderous and defamatory lies in order to have the case dimissed. I have struggled very hard through 2 dismissals before obtaining my NLRB files through FOIA and managing to prove so many lies that walmart had told the NLRB, that i believe that is why The Deputy General Counsel finnally told me to re-file my case. It is now back open, but not going well.
    Walmart has gone to great lengths, by doing things like what they did to me, in order to instill an atmosphere of fear of reporting in the employees. Everything is not fine at all in Walmart, in fact nobody has any idea how bad it really is because walmart has carefully ensured that the employees are so afraid to report wrongdoing that they won’t even say anything when they hear a mentally handicapped female hysterically wailing across the store and hiding in the break room from the ongoing extreme verbal abuse of the store manager, and when the one guy naive enough to say something speaks up, he is promptly fired and subjected to many forms of retaliation up to and including false terminations and having his name feloniuosly slandered to the NLRB. I could go on and write a book about everything that I alone have been through, not to mention what others have been through with this evil tactic used by walmart to keep their employees quiet about the truth of what really goes on in those stores on a daily basis, but it seems nobody would probably even care. If you could please get back to me to at least confirm that you have recieved this I would apprecite it. Meanwhile I have lost my job, my career of nearly 10-years, and probably any chance at ever retiring in my lifetime all because I reported employee abuse including of a mentally handicapped female by a store manager in our walmart store. Robert Snodgrass, 715 Taylor rd., Downingtown, Pa 19335, snod307@hotmail.com 484-252-9596 Thank You.