The former chief of Wal-Mart Mexico resigns in Metlife after a bribery scandal
The former CEO of the Mexican division of Wal-Mart’s Eduardo Castro-Wright resigned the office he now held in the board of directors of the insurer MetLife amid the scandal surrounding the world’s largest retailer for alleged bribes to Mexican authorities.
Castro-Wright resigned “voluntarily” and effect “immediately” to the positions they held in the boards of MetLife and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company “personal reasons” as the insurer announced in a brief press release.
The resignation of Ecuadorian executive comes days after The New York Times published Saturday that Wal-Mart knew since 2005 reported “widespread bribery” in Mexico by its employees and senior executives of the company who was then head Castro-Wright the stoppered.
The newspaper, citing internal emails and company, bribes exceeded $ 24 million to get permission for new stores in Mexico, a country where they are located one in five U.S. chain stores throughout the world.
In a letter to the president and CEO of MetLife, Steven Kandarian, the executive announced that Ecuador will be forced to resign by the “recent events”, he says, require your full attention, and the confidence that “these distractions “will be resolved in its favor” in the coming months. ”
“Meanwhile (the distractions) does not allow me to develop my duties at the highest level, as required by the board and my own person, and therefore, I must focus my energies on spending time with my family and protect my good name,” he added Castro-Wright in the letter.
Wal-Mart announced today the creation of a new post to oversee the firm’s compliance with U.S. law against Foreign Corrupt Practices in each of the markets of the world where it is present, as stated by his spokesman, David Tovar, in a press release.
The retail giant explained that strengthen their internal controls, policies put in place “robust”, improve staff training and increase their audits, among other measures to prevent evasion of the law against corruption abroad by U.S. companies .
Wal-Mart said today that “it is important to put some things in context,” including that the charges brought by the New York newspaper “more than six years old,” and that six months ago the company launched an “aggressive investigation” the facts referred to by that story.
The U.S. company, which is the largest private employer in Mexico with a total of 209,000 workers, reiterated that “will not tolerate any violation” of the Law on Foreign Corrupt Practices “in any place or at any level.”
The charges against Wal-Mart have raised again the controversy over the practices of U.S. companies abroad and according to several analysts have suggested the scandal could prove problematic for the company and put hard to open new stores in the U.S. and abroad .
Shares of Wal-Mart, one of the thirty companies comprising the Dow Jones Industrial, which fell 4.66% on Monday, closed today with a further decline of 2.97% in the New York Stock Exchange, where they earn a decline of 3.33% since the beginning of the year.
Category: Money
