A ‘Sorceress’ in Brazil, a ‘Wink’ in India: Walmart pleads guilty to a decade of bribes

For more than a decade, Walmart used middlemen to make dubious payments to governments around the globe in order to open new locations, U.S. prosecutors and securities regulators said in a settlement agreement Thursday. 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.

That lack of internal control led to a seven-year inquiry that culminated Thursday with Walmart’s Brazilian subsidiary pleading guilty to a federal crime. The guilty plea, and the $282 million in fines that Walmart has agreed to pay, capped one of the biggest investigations ever under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The investigation, which was conducted by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, came after The New York Times revealed in 2012 that Walmart had made suspicious payments to officials in Mexico and then tried to conceal them from top executives at the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. And even when the issues reached the main office, an internal investigation essentially went nowhere.