C M Y K Nxxx,2012-04-22,A,001,Bs-BK,E3

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VOL. CLXI . . No. 55,749 © 2012 The New York Times NEW YORK, SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2012 $6 beyond the greater New York metropolitan area. $5.00 Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle

An Internal Inquiry Was Shut Down, and the Authorities Were Not Notified

By DAVID BARSTOW MEXICO CITY — In Septem- agent, summed up their initial ber 2005, a senior Wal-Mart law- findings this way: “There is rea- yer received an alarming e-mail sonable suspicion to believe that from a former executive at the Mexican and USA laws have company’s largest foreign sub- been violated.” sidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In The lead investigator recom- the e-mail and follow-up conver- mended that Wal-Mart expand sations, the former executive de- the investigation. scribed how Wal-Mart de Mexico Instead, an examination by had orchestrated a campaign of The New York Times found, Wal- bribery to win market domi- Mart’s leaders shut it down. nance. In its rush to build stores, Neither American nor Mexican he said, the company had paid law enforcement officials were bribes to obtain permits in virtu- notified. None of Wal-Mart de ally every corner of the country. Mexico’s leaders were disci- The former executive gave plined. Indeed, its chief execu- names, dates and bribe amounts. tive, Eduardo Castro-Wright, He knew so much, he explained, identified by the former execu- because for years he had been tive as the driving force behind MAZEN MAHDI/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY the lawyer in charge of obtaining years of bribery, was promoted to More Unrest in Bahrain, and Questions Over a Death construction permits for Wal- vice chairman of Wal-Mart in Mart de Mexico. 2008. Until this article, the allega- Men and women fled tear gas near a site north of the capital where the body of a protester was found on Saturday. Page 14. Wal-Mart dispatched investi- tions and Wal-Mart’s investiga- gators to Mexico City, and within tion had never been publicly dis- days they unearthed evidence of closed. widespread bribery. They found But The Times’s examination a paper trail of hundreds of sus- uncovered a prolonged struggle Is That Trip Nonprofit Acts as a Stealth Business Lobbyist pect payments totaling more at the highest levels of Wal-Mart, than $24 million. They also found try — including dozens who group has influenced by mobiliz- documents showing that Wal- a struggle that pitted the compa- ‘Presidential’ ny’s much publicized commit- By MIKE McINTIRE would vote on the Ohio bill. ing its lawmaker members, a Mart de Mexico’s top executives One of them, Bill Seitz, a promi- vast majority of them Republi- not only knew about the pay- ment to the highest moral and Or ‘Political’? Desperate for new revenue, nent Republican state senator, cans. ments, but had taken steps to ethical standards against its re- Ohio lawmakers introduced legis- wrote to a fellow senior lawmak- Despite its generally low pro- conceal them from Wal-Mart’s lentless pursuit of growth. lation last year that would make er to relay ALEC’s concerns file, ALEC has drawn scrutiny re- headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Under fire from labor critics, worried about press leaks and By JACKIE CALMES it easier to recover money from about “the recent upsurge” in cently for promoting gun rights In a confidential report to his su- businesses that defraud the state. false-claims legislation nation- policies like the Stand Your periors, Wal-Mart’s lead investi- facing a sagging stock price, Wal- WASHINGTON — Facing It was quickly flagged at the wide. “While this is understand- Ground law at the center of the gator, a former F.B.I. special Continued on Page 8 5,000 enthusiastic students at Washington headquarters of the able, as states are broke, the con- Trayvon Martin shooting case in Florida Atlantic University, Pres- American Legislative Exchange Florida, as well as bills to weaken ident Obama rolled up his sleeves sidered advice from our friends Council, or ALEC, a business- labor unions and tighten voter and raised his voice to chastise at ALEC was that such legislation backed group that views such identification rules. Amid the Republicans for their spending is not well taken and should not controversies, several compa- cuts and “broken-down theories,” “false claims” laws as encourag- be approved,” he said in a private nies, including Coca-Cola, Intuit evoking chants of “Four more ing frivolous lawsuits. ALEC’s memorandum. years!” membership includes not only The legislation was reworked and Kraft Foods, have left the group. And that was the nonpolitical corporations, but nearly 2,000 to ease some of ALEC’s concerns, stop on Mr. Obama’s swing-state state legislators across the coun- making it one of many bills the Most of the attention has fo- itinerary for that day early this cused on ALEC’s role in creating month. The president sand- model bills, drafted by lobbyists Wal-Mart Abroadand lawmakers, that broadly ad- wiched the 34-minute speech, billed as an official address on his vance a pro-business, socially so-called Buffett Rule for a BYmini- David barstow AND ALEJANDRA XAconservativeNIC VO agenda.N BE ButRTRA a re- B mum tax rate for the wealthiest view of internal ALEC docu- Americans, amid three overtly ments shows that this is only one partisan fund-raisers thatNomi ac- nation for The 2013 pulitzer prize facet of a sophisticated operation for shaping public policy at a counted for the bulk of his c timeategory: Investigative reporting along the south Florida coast. state-by-state level. The records Mixing policy and politics, Mr. offer a glimpse of how special in- terests effectively turn ALEC’s JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES Obama is picking up the pace of Shoppers in Mexico City. Expanding rapidly in the mid-2000’s, his travel with that ultimate in- lawmaker members into stealth cumbent’s perk — unlimited use he moment of truth for Wal-Mart’s internallobbyists, investigators providing them came with inWal-Mart December de Mexico 2005. was the company’s brightest success story. of Air Force One. The trips are talking points, signaling how mostly to about a dozen swing they should vote and collaborat- states that will decide the elec- Just months before, a former real-estateing on lawyerbills affecting for hundreds Wal-Mart’s of Mexican subsidiary had tion and to two reliably Demo- contacted company officials in Arkansas andissues described like school vouchers how and for Inyears the he Uprooting and his bosses of had Kurds, paid Iraq cratic states, New York andT Cali- tobacco taxes. fornia, for campaign money. The documents — hundreds of And Mr. Obama is not bribesthe only to obtain zoning rulings and construction permitspages of minutes that of private allowed meet- Wal-MartTests ato Fragilewin market National dominance Unity frequent flier with a re-election ings, member e-mail alerts and agenda. Both Vice Presidentin every Jo- corner of the country. There were hundredscorrespondence of suspect — were payments,obtained he said, totaling more than $24 seph R. Biden Jr. and the first by the watchdog group Common lady, Michelle Obama, million. are in- Cause and shared with The New By TIM ARANGO creasingly stumping around the BOB DAUGHERTY/ASSOCIATED PRESS York Times. Common Cause, KHANAQIN, Iraq — In Janu- Whether by terrorism or judi- country as the campaign seeks to Now, after a preliminary inquiry, Wal-Mart’swhich investigators said it got some of werethe doc- reportingary, the dismembered that they body ofhadcial found order, thepowerful continuing dis- repeat its fund-raising success of Charles W. Colson Dies at 80 uments from a whistle-blower Wisam Jumai, a Kurdish intelli- placement of Iraq’s Kurdish mi- 2008 and counter a buildingevidence wave Charles that W. theColson, lawyer in 1974, in a politicalMexico, enforcer Sergio for President Ciceroand Zapata, others from was public tellingrecord re- thegence truth. officer, was They discovered begged in a nority to be lays allowed bare the unfinished to Continued on Page 19 Richard M. Nixon who turned to religion. Obituary, Page 22. Continued on Page 18 field in Sadiyah, a small town in business of reconciliation in the northeastern Iraq. Soon his fam- wake of the American military’s search on. ily and friends, one after another, withdrawal, and it is a symptom received text messages offering a of the rapidly deteriorating rela- Instead, executives at the company’s highest level shut the investigationchoice: leave down.or be killed. tionship between the semiauton- In Customer Service Consulting, Disney’s Small World Is Growing “Wisam has been killed,” read omous Kurdish government No doubt they believed that the matter would quietly end there. Andone message for more sent to than a cousin. fivebased years, in Erbil they and the central in an entertaining way, prompt- three years, according to Disney, hired a network of field repre- “Wait for your turn. If you want government in Baghdad. By BROOKS BARNESwere right.ing it to employThen a ukulele-playingDavid Barstowpowered of in part The by itsNew aggressive Yorksentatives Times to began sign up clients digging and your into life, leavethe Sadiyah.” case. The schism, which is most im- greeter dressed in safari gear. pursuit of new business. Over the started dispatching its execu- After Mr. Jumai’s killing, near- mediately over sharing oil wealth ORLANDO, Fla. — Maryland These personal service tips last two years alone, 300 school tives to companies wanting help; ly three dozen Kurdish families but is more deeply about histori- teachers were instructed to en- Nocame one from still the Disney inside Institute, Wal-Mart,systems across of course, the country washave talking.before that, advice-seekersBut by obtaining trav- fled their hundreds homes and moved of confidentialhere, cal grievances company and Kurdish aspi- gage children by crouching and the low-profile consulting divi- sought its advice. eled to Walt Disney World here according to local officials, to the rations for independence, raises speaking to them at eyedocuments level. sion of the and Walt interviewingDisney Company. Otherimportant clients range players, from very Barstowor Disneyland pieced in California. togethersanctuary the of hidden a city that iscorporate claimed serious drama questions — about the fu- Chevrolet dealers were taught to Desperate for new ways to con- large entities — Häagen-Dazs In- “We’re putting our people on by the government in Baghdad ture of a unified Iraq. The crisis, think in theater metaphors:in all on- itsnect machinations with consumers, an increas- and powerternational, plays United — Airlines, of an the investigationplanes all day every that day, domes- Wal-Mart’sbut patrolled leaders by Kurdish feared forces. American could have officials say, is far stage, where smiles greet poten- ing array of industries and or- country of South Africa — to tically and internationally,” said Other Kurds from the area have more grave than the political ten- tial buyers, and offstage,crippled where ganizations it as itare expanded paying Disney to throughsmall ones: Latin three Subway American restau- Jeff and James, around who runs the Disney’s world.come here after being pushed out sions between the Shiite-domi- sales representatives can take teach them how to become, well, rants in Maine, a Michigan hair consulting branch. “Some clients over property disputes that can nated government of Prime Min- out-of-sight cigarette breaks. Themore Wal-Mart like Disney. investigatorssalon, a Boston had youth-counselingin fact told theirare in great superiors shape and wantthat to therebe traced was to Saddam“reasonable Hussein’s istersuspicion Nuri Kamal to al-Maliki and A Florida children’s hospital Revenue from the Disney Insti- center. improve even further, and some policy in the 1970s of expelling the country’s Sunni Arab minor- was advised to welcome believepatients tute that has Mexican doubled over theand last U.S.The laws Disney have Institute been recently violated.”Continued Yet on Wal-Mart Page 4 neverKurds and notifiedresettling Arabs. law enforcementContinued on Page 4 officials in either country. As the case was being shut down, Wal-Mart’s leaders in the United States handed INTERNATIONAL 6-16 NATIONAL 17-21 SPORTSSUNDAY OPINION IN SUNDAY REVIEW

China’s Media Cudgelit off to a topMore executive Truce Monitors in Mexico for Syria — oneOrrin of Hatch the Facesvery Primary men who wasWhite alleged Sox Pitcher to haveIs Perfect authorizedNicholas the D. bribes. Kristof PAGE 11 The propaganda apparatus that the The United Nations Security Council ap- Utah’s six-term senator survives a test Philip Humber, a former Met, threw the Communist leader Bo XilaiThe exploited Mexican to proved executive increasing the numberwielded of cease- the finalfrom nine blow, challengers exonerating at the Republican his 21stcolleagues perfect game in and major leagueaccusing histo- Cicero of stealing burnish his image before histhe purge missing has fire $24 monitors million. in Syria as (Testament an advance toParty Barstow’s state convention, mastery but must face ofa backroomry, retiring all 27 detail Seattle Mariners was anbat- e-mail message from now been turned against him. PAGE 6 team toured Homs. PAGE 14 second-round opponent. PAGE 18 ters in a 4-0 victory. PAGE 2 U(D5E71D)x+=!/!/!=!$ one executive asking how to send the investigative files to Mexico “in a secure manner.” He was told to use FedEx, which promised “good control on those shipments’’ and an ordinariness that wouldn’t alert government snoopers.) Even before The Times’s first piece was published in April, Barstow’s reporting began to shatter the long silence. Wal-Mart was in a routine worldwide anticorruption audit when it learned, in the fall of 2011, that Barstow was on the Mexican case. The company hurriedly expanded its inquiries and notified federal authorities. Once The Times’s story broke, Wal-Mart’s executives were proven prescient in one respect: the revelations indeed had devastating consequences. Pressure had been growing to weaken the federal antibribery law — the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Wal-Mart case promptly put a stop to that. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating, as are authorities in Mexico. In mid-November 2012, Wal-Mart disclosed in a regulatory filing that it was examining possible violations of the antibribery law in three of its other primary overseas markets — China, India and Brazil. Amid shareholder suits and protests, the company has radically overhauled its compliance and investigative protocols, and a number of central players in the scandal have left. Expansion plans have been compromised in Mexico and the United States, and are likely to be slowed in other overseas markets, too. By year’s end, Wal-Mart’s new investigation had cost it nearly $100 million. But such was the depth and authority of The Times’s reporting that Wal-Mart’s investigators lagged far behind, still trying to trace its tracks. Together with Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab, a veteran Mexican business reporter, Barstow did the investigation that Wal-Mart should have done in the first place, unearthing the wrongdoing that the bosses in Arkansas had chosen to ignore. This was investigative reporting at once infinitely patient and mind- breakingly hard — in a country with a labyrinthine and famously evasive bureaucracy, with no receipts to prove that payoffs had been made and no one willing to own up to being on the receiving end. Traveling across the country, Barstow and von Bertrab made themselves into masters of the exquisitely prosaic world of planning and zoning in Mexico. In city after city, document by document, they took apart the bureaucratic process and assembled the proof that Wal-Mart had to have paid bribes when, as if by magic, it won approvals that the law didn’t allow. In one of Mexico City’s most densely populated neighborhoods, they found, Wal-Mart paid more than $300,000 in bribes to build a Sam’s Club without a host of required permits. And north of Mexico City, their digging uncovered more than $700,000 in bribes that allowed Wal-Mart to build a vast refrigerated distribution center — essential to its expansion plans — in an area where electric power was so scarce that many smaller developers were being turned away. Where Barstow and von Bertrab most completely re-created the architecture of corruption, though, was in the town of Teotihuacán, where, despite a furious backlash, Wal-Mart sought to build a supermarket in the shadow of the ancient pyramids, one of Mexico’s most revered and sacred sites. When an unfavorable zoning decision seemed to doom the project, Wal-Mart paid a $52,000 bribe to get the map changed; von Bertrab found the crucial piece of evidence on a computer disk in a shoe box in a government office. Then there was the $25,900 payment for a traffic permit; $81,000 for the blessing of the Institute of Archaeology and History, official guardian of Mexico’s cultural treasures; and $114,000 to Teotihuacán’s mayor for the all- important construction permit. The Teotihuacán piece, published in December, just might be the most fascinating — and the most damning — zoning story ever told. Wal-Mart has repeatedly pledged to follow the highest ethical standards in its business. What The Times’s reporting demonstrated was that despite this pledge, Wal-Mart’s conquest of Mexico — it is now the country’s largest private employer — was built on a secret foundation of corruption. The Times is proud to nominate David Barstow and Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.