Press Trust of India
New Delhi, Dec 4: Government Friday said no case of alleged corrupt practices, including payment of bribes to officials concerned by several multinational retail companies to make investment in the retail sector has come to its notice. “No such case has come to the notice of the government,” Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
Sinha was replying to a query whether the government has recently taken note of alleged corrupt practices, including payment of bribes to the concerned officials by several MNCs to make investments in the retail sector. In October, media reports suggested that the World’s largest retailer Wal-Mart made “suspicious payments” towards “thousands of small bribes” totalling millions of dollars to local officials in India. “The vast majority of the suspicious payments were less than $200, and some were as low as $5, the people said, but when added together they totalled millions of dollars,” ‘The Wall Street Journal’ had reported.
In November 2012, the company’s erstwhile joint venture Bharti Wal-Mart had suspended five people, including the then CFO Pankaj Madan, as part of an ongoing global investigation by the US retail giant against alleged corrupt practices in India. The world’s largest retailer, which entered India in 2007 through a supermarket joint venture with Bharti Enterprises, parted ways with the Indian partner in 2013, and shelved plans to open retail stores in the country and instead decided to become solely a wholesaler. The investigations in India were part of a probe that included Wal-mart’s operations in Mexico, China and Brazil, over allegations of violation of FCPA of the US, which bars bribing officials of foreign governments. Walmart has also disclosed to the US Senate about its lobbying activities to gain access to key markets, including India.
