Wal-Mart has come under attack by investors over revelations demonstrating that the company used questionable sales practices in China.
"Stores in China continue to make bulk sales, sometimes unprofitably and without required management authorizations, according to employees who've left the company this past month," Bloomberg reports.
"Concerns about bulk sales, raised as far back as 2011 in an internal report, have been the subject of inquiries in China by Wal-Mart's legal team as recently as May, according to an internal company e-mail and an employee interviewed by lawyers.
Current and former employees divulged a number of facts about the shady business policies that were made as a result of pressure to meet financial goals and obligations for specific stores. IN some cases, specific Wal-Mart locations in China manipulated markups of inventory and made allegedly purposely drafted false accounting reports.
Several years ago, the multinational corporation attempted to handle discrepancies with inventory pricing and launched an internal investigation of the matter.
"There is a general flexibility on ethics" in China, internal review conduction Stanford Lin said, according to Bloomberg.
"There was a huge desire to perform. In this market, they believe if they're hitting the numbers, then they're doing the right thing."
Some analysts have suggested that external pressures from other competing multinational corporations in China that focus on the same market as Wal-Mart have contributed to the fraudulent activity.
Euromonitor International reports that the company is the third-largest hypermarket operator in China.
