In the complaint, Mr Perry says he was forced to amend a memo about his findings on allegations that Walmart violated the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an anti-corruption law, in its efforts to expand rapidly in Mexico.

Walmart, however, said the corporate lawyer was fired in 2017 for violating company policies.

“Mr. Perry’s termination was due to a violation of our ethics, discrimination and harassment policies and had nothing to do with his work on our seven-year FCPA investigation,” said a spokesperson for Walmart in a statement.

In his complaint, Mr. Perry accused the company of manufacturing grounds for his dismissal. Neither Mr. Perry nor his lawyer responded to a request for further comment.

The lawsuit was first reported by the Arkansas Times, a local weekly newspaper.

Walmart last year agreed to pay $ 282 million to resolve a multi-year investigation by US authorities into the corruption allegations, which became public following a 2012 New York Times investigation. operations in other countries, including Brazil, China and India.

Mr. Perry was sent to Mexico in 2011 to investigate the allegations, according to his complaint. After a four-day investigation, he wrote a note to senior management at Walmart summarizing his findings.

He received no response and no words were mentioned to Mr Perry about his findings until five years later, he said.

The note later became a topic of discussion between Walmart lawyers and US officials, according to his complaint. In 2017, she was asked to undergo an interview about the content of her grade. He agreed and, within 24 hours, was questioned twice by five lawyers from the Walmart defense team.

“Mr. Perry felt intimidated and threatened, even as a lawyer,” the complaint said. “Perry declined to make changes to the memo.”

The tension then escalated into a campaign of retaliation to have him fired, he said.

In his complaint, Perry accuses Walmart of trying to unearth complaints and allegations that could serve as a basis for firing him and undermining his credibility.

Associates under Mr Perry’s supervision have been questioned about his conduct, he said. One, a single mother who Mr. Perry had previously been asked to fire, reported him for improper conduct, according to her complaint. She alleged that her claim was a preventive measure to save her job and that Mr. Perry’s attention was aimed at helping her improve her job performance.

A conversation with a coworker about parenting also fueled Mr Perry’s dismissal, according to his complaint. During the conversation, Mr Perry recounted an incident years earlier in which he inflicted corporal punishment on two of his children after they lied about their use of a new tablet.

According to Mr. Perry’s complaint, the Walmart report about him indicated that he had lost control and beat up one of his children. An employee later described her interview with Walmart’s internal investigation team as a “witch hunt,” according to the complaint.

The same day he was fired, Walmart reported him to state authorities for child abuse charges. Local authorities subsequently closed their investigation into the case without taking action, while the local prosecutor refused to pursue the case, Mr Perry said.

Write to Dylan Tokar at [email protected]