SEC Probing Pepsi’s Former GC After She Claimed She Was Wrongly Ousted
Former general counsel for PepsiCo Inc. Maura Smith is now the focus of an investigation by the SEC after she claimed she was fired in retaliation for the way she handled earlier internal probes concerning allegations of wrongdoing in Russia, according to a report at TheStreet.com.
The Wall Street Journal originally reported on the investigation.
Smith was Pepsi’s general counsel for little more than a year, until June 2012, when she was tasked with overseeing outside lawyers the company hired to investigate business practices with Wimm-Bill-Dann, a Russian dairy product and juice maker Pepsi acquired for $5 billion in 2011.