Walmart announced that Enrique Ostale, president and CEO of Walmart Chile, has been named executive vice president, president and CEO of Walmart Latin America, where he will oversee Walmart's operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua.

Ostale will assume his new role on March 1, at which point Eduardo Solorzano will retire as president and CEO of Walmart Latin America while continuing to serve as chairman of the board of directors at Walmart de Mexico.

Gian Carlo Nucci, currently executive vice president and COO of Walmart de Mexico, has been named to replace Ostale as president and CEO of Walmart Chile.

Reuters notes in its story that Solorzano "had run the retailer's business in Mexico when the company reportedly began a probe into bribery allegations in the country," but reports that Walmart says the moves have nothing to do with the ongoing internal and federal probes into what the New York Times said was systemic and systematic bribery of Mexican officials as a way of greasing the wheels of growth there.

KC's View: Walmart says that none of these moves have anything to do with the various bribery investigations, but if you believe that, Walmart also has a bridge it would like to sell you in Brooklyn.

Depending on how the investigations go, and the extent to which senior executives in a number of countries are implicated, these could just be the beginning of some executive shifts and retirements (forced and otherwise) that reshape the retailer's top team.