[ix] The announcement comes one day after the California State Teachers' Retirement System, which filed suit this month against Walmart executives and board members for "alleged gross misconduct," said it would vote its 5.3 million shares to remove the company's entire board. Such opposition has been building since reports emerged last month that senior executives at Walmart in 2005, including Duke, then head of the company's international division, suppressed an internal investigation into $24 million in bribes paid to Mexican officials to speed permits for Walmart stores south of the border. [x] In addition to a new internal company probe, various criminal and civil investigations, by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission among others, have begun. Matters took another turn last week, when Walmart disclosed in an SEC filing that an internal audit committee was looking into "other alleged crimes or misconduct in connection with foreign subsidiaries."