‘Lobbying and bribery are two very different things...These disclosures (by Walmart) are for expenses in the US’

As an American Ambassador who knows this country better than certainly most journalists, how do you look at what has happened lately, particularly with Walmart's revelation or disclosure of lobbying? The view in Parliament is that all this money was spent to bribe Indian politicians and bureaucrats.

I think there are a couple of important points to make on this from the US's side. What has happened is that the accusations are that this money was bribery. What it is, is lobbying. In the United States, these are two very separate things. In the US, (under the) Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, bribery of foreign officials is a serious crime. And allegations or investigations by the company—and Walmart has indicated that they are doing one—and the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission will look into that. Lobbying in the US is regulated and the effort is to make it transparent. We have organisations, companies, NGOs and associations that put forward through lobbyists their ideas for legislation, for executive orders, for policy making, and this is recognised as part of our decision-making. We also recognise that there were some abuses of it. Enormous amounts of money were spent on it. Starting with 1995 and with an amended legislation in 2007, we now require lobbyists to register, where they tell us their names, whether it is a company or an individual, they tell us the issues that they are lobbying on and they tell us how much money they have spent. It is a mandatory disclosure and it is looked at to see whether it is done correctly. There are officials who deal with lobbyists, it is part of their job. There are certain limits as to what they can accept by way of a lunch or any kind of a gift. Those are some of the abuses, both on the government side and the company side. Another point is that these regulations or disclosures are for expenses in the United States. They can include office expenses, salaries, research, money spent on brochures that might be developed to give to policy makers.

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