While most other companies are doing their businesses in a clean manner, Wal-Mart seems to be doing it in a slightly less clean manner. An article from The New York Times reports that Wal-Mart Mexico has been bribing officials to get their building licenses.
Wal-Mart is a very large company, encompassing 8,970 stores around the world and expanding more and more. Wal-Mart Mexico is it’s largest subsidiary outside the US. The problem arises when a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.
Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they found evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspected payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
In my opinion, the main issue in this article is the fact that Wal-Mart de Mexico has gone to such lengths to hide the evidence of their infarction. Bribery is also a breach of business ethics. Businesses, should run in a clean, respectable and reputable manner in which all parties can be accounted for their actions. This news story has showed us how businesses can easily get what they want, whenever they want. Moreover, many competitors who do not use bribes to get government approval may be at a losing side. Wal-Mart could potentially run a monopoly on the supermarket scene in Mexico if this continues.
In the end, There are many companies that pride themselves in their correct business ethics, but in this competitive world, they are becoming very few and far between.