John Perkins on CNBC (video)

The Big Bribes in Mexico

Mon 23 Apr 12 | 10:43 AM ET

The following transcript has not been checked for accuracy.

if you have just joined us wal-mart is in trouble this morning. the company's alleged corruption was profiled in the new york times this weekend, the paper reporting the largest retailer cut off an investigation. john joins us here at the new york stock exchange. you were an economic hit man for american business. what does that mean? what did you do? we identified countries that had resources and had a huge loan but the money never goes to the country. it goesown corporations to build infrastructure projects like power plants that benefit a few families but don't help the majority of the people who can't afford to buy electricity. the people are stuck with a huge loan that can't be repaid. sometimes we say sell oil real cheap without environmental restrictions or social regulations and then in a few cases where we failed. i talk about how i failed with the president of Ecuador, they go in and they assassinate their leaders. to be clear your allegations are going right to the top of government and american foreign policy? in my case that was the job. the corporations like wal-mart are at different levels. my job was to corrupt high officials in countries and get them to accept huge loans to sign off on them to make a lot of money. who paid you? i worked for a private consulting firm. my title was economist. we were paid by world bank grants. did you have direct experience in mexico or with wal-mart? i had a lot of experience in latin america but never mexico directly. what in the story what does it mean to you given the context of your work? it sounds to me that something probably did happen. i think it's a terrible shame that it does. one problem it creates is it takes competition aw from mexican firms and small companies that can't afford these. so wal-mart becomes this huge employer. that's also part of the benefit. a lot of jobs for mexicans and a lot of low prices for mexican consumer whose need to buy paper towels and dog food. to a certain degree that is true but it also puts a lot of mexicans out of work. one of the reasons we have the immigration problem here is the mexican economy is a wreck to a large degree because of some of the regulations that have put farmers out of work. when mexicans can't find work they come to the united states and we complain about an immigration problem. the allegations seem minuscule in comparison of some of the things you described happening at a high level. would you agree? many of the payments may have been to move things along in a more rapid fashion. 25 million compared to the things i was talking about. if the implications are very large because you suddenly moved out of the realm where the u.s. government, those big organizations are playing a role to help the country develop. the theory is if you invest the money in infrastructure you are helping the country develop. in the case of wal-mart it's really been for the sake of one company. yesterday maybe increasing employment but the motive is to make lots of profit. as we get trance parancies people will be thinking this is awful. is your impression that the way in which business is done is getting worse or better? one is the fact that u.s. prosecutors seem to be stepping up enforcement of the 1977 act and you now have whistle blowers where you can get as a whistle blower 15 to 0% offunds. maybe this is what is motivating this article today. my impression is -- i have been traveling around a lot. i just spoke at a conference. in my sense people coming out of mba programs are very concerned about corruption. they want to see us move into a better world. they are worried about having kids and bringing them up in a world where they see the economy collapsing because of the way business has recently been done. they want to see that change. i think the big corporations are beginning to get it, too. i hope it is working. i do feel that there has been a tremendous change in attitude in the past six or seven years. thanks for joining us. thank you.

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