India Retail: Nationalist Ministers Say Wal-Mart's DC Lobbying Amounts To Bribery

New rules allowing transnational multibrand retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) to set up shop in some of India’s larger cities have been facing steep criticism from the conservative-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s second-largest party.

Reeling from last week’s parliamentary vote of confidence supporting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s move to open up the country’s $450 billion, fast-growing retail market to foreign direct investment (FDI) by international big box retailers, opposition MPs pointed to recent Wal-Mart lobbying-disclosure filings on Capitol Hill they said proves the world’s largest retailer has bribed its way into the Subcontinent.

And even though such lobbying took place in Washington, D.C. – and was related to U.S. international trade policy – Indian opponents of FDI in retail say lobbying amounts to bribery, claiming the company has spent $25 million in Washington trying to open the way for expansion into India. "I know [lobbying] is allowed in the U.S. But the laws of the two countries are different. Lobbying in the U.S. does not mean corruption,  but in India, it does. That is the difference. There is illegality,” Yashwant Sinha, senior BJP member told the Times of India in a report published Monday...