Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Friday that it has found no evidence that a fired systems technician secretly listened to its board or that the retailer conducted surveillance on shareholders who submitted proposals for its upcoming shareholders meeting.
The world's largest retailer said the findings came out of a review conducted by its legal department. It also said it was mailing an affidavit and certification of the review's findings to its shareholder proponents.
A copy of the affidavit was provided to Reuters by Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has faced mounting calls to disclose its surveillance records after it said in March that it fired security worker Bruce Gabbard for what the company said were unauthorised recordings of calls to and from a New York Times reporter and for intercepting text messages.
A lawyer for Gabbard could not immediately be reached for comment. In a Wall Street Journal report earlier this month, Gabbard claimed the he was part of a surveillance operation that included snooping on Wal-Mart's board and stockholders.
Following the article's publication, Tom Hyde, Wal-Mart's top legal officer, sent a letter to shareholder proponents saying that while the article implied that the company had initiated an intrusive "threat assessment" of shareholders who submitted proposals for inclusion in Wal-Mart's annual proxy statement, that was not true.
But that did not satisfy shareholders or Wal-Mart critics. New York City's comptroller sent letters to the US Attorney General's office and the US Securities and Exchange Commission asking for an investigation, and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said any company that investigated or intimidated shareholders after they submitted proxy petitions should be "condemned."
In the affidavit, Wal-Mart said the only information sought or obtained about the proponents of shareholder proposals was acquired through Internet searches and "other readily available public sources and only when the shareholder had a known or suspected history of disrupting meetings or staging disruptive protests."
It said it "would have been remiss from a corporate security standpoint if it had not taken reasonable steps to make such inquiries about shareholders proponents with a history of disruptive behaviour."
Wal-Mart is holding its annual shareholders meeting on June 1. The meeting is typically attended by thousands of Wal-Mart employees, shareholders and the media. In the letter being mailed to shareholder proponents on Friday, Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott said he hoped the results of the legal department's review would allay the concerns of shareholders.