Walmart Inc., a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Arkansas, was a global retailer whose shares were registered with the SEC and traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Walmart operated in many countries through a variety of subsidiaries, including the subsidiaries in Mexico, China, Brazil, and India implicated in this case.
According to the documents in this case, from 2000 through 2011, Walmart’s subsidiaries in Brazil, China, India, and Mexico operated without a system of sufficient anti-corruption-related internal accounting controls despite Walmart's knowledge of the controls' inadequacy. The failure to implement sufficient controls allowed an environment in which third-party intermediaries hired by some of Walmart's foreign subsidiaries made improper payments to government officials in order to obtain store permits and licenses. Additionally, when Walmart learned of certain anti-corruption risks, the company neither investigated the allegations in a satisfactory manner nor mitigated the known risks until at least 2011.
In a settled administrative proceeding initiated on June 20, 2019, the SEC ordered Walmart to cease and desist violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions of the FCPA. The SEC further ordered Walmart to pay disgorgement of $119,647,735 plus prejudgment interest of $25,043,437 and to report on the status of the company's remediation and implementation of anti-corruption-related compliance measures for a term of two years.
In a related proceeding on the same date, Walmart entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the DOJ under which it agreed to pay a penalty of approximately $137 million. As part of the agreement, Walmart's Brazilian subsidiary, WMT Brasilia, pled guilty to FCPA offenses.
