Wal-Mart Balks at Paying $600-Million-Plus in Bribery Case

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is butting heads with the U.S. government over how to wrap up a long-running foreign corruption investigation. Officials have proposed that the world’s biggest retailer pay at least $600 million to resolve probes by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission into whether it bribed government officials in markets from Mexico to India and China, according to three people familiar with the matter. The retailer has rebuffed the government’s request, two of them said.  Such a settlement would rank among the largest in four decades under a U.S. law against bribing foreign officials to obtain business.