This is a follow-up to
my diary yesterdayabout former Wal-Mart Director Tom Coghlin. In short, when he resigned last month Wal-Mart alleged that he had made unauthorized expenses. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal suggested that some of those payments may have gone to bribe union staffers to help the company fight organization. The local US Attorney is investigating.
Thanks to "silence" for offering the link to the full Journal story in the comments to my post. You can read the United Food and Commercial Workers' statement here.
But there's something else in the coverage today that I find very interesting.
This is from
Steven Greenhouse's story in the NYT:
In a statement, Mr. Coughlin's lawyers, William W. Taylor III and Blair G. Brown, said: "Mr. Coughlin did not seek nor obtain any improper reimbursements from Wal-Mart. We are unable to respond further to allegations concerning expense reimbursement without seeing the records.
Wal-Mart has refused to provide them to Mr. Coughlin."
The lawyers said it was unfair for Wal-Mart not to provide Mr. Coughlin, who had once been in the running for chief executive, with the documents after he had worked for the company for 27 years.
[emphasis added]
As "DHinMI" pointed out in the comments yesterday:
[T]he WSJ article focuses much more on his apparent personal graft rather than the union stuff.
And Wal-Mart won't show Coughlin's lawyers the alleged evidence of his expense account misdeeds. Yet those receipts smear Coughlin, making him look like a guilty liar before he has even been formally charged with anything.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to make an educated guess about which side of this dispute leaked those documents to the Journal.
Tom Coughlin is getting hung out to dry. Let's hope he's not too happy about it.
JR