But the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday night that the U.S. Department of Justice, conducting a probe into the matter under the auspices of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, has not found a major smoking gun. The investigation will likely to result in a much smaller case than the government initially expected, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the probe.

The New York Times‘ articles in 2012 claimed that top bosses at Wal-Mart’s Mexican division sought to hide a widespread bribery scheme from the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. The allegations went back to 2005, when a former Wal-Mart de Mexico executive allegedly e-mailed one of Wal-Mart’s senior lawyers, detailing how the world’s largest retailer had paid more than $24 million in bribes to secure construction permits throughout Mexico. About one-fifth of Walmart’s 11,500 stores are in Mexico.

A spokesman for Wal-Mart declined to comment, and a spokesperson for the DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The sources cited by the Journal said that the three-year investigation isn’t over yet, but that most of the legwork is done, and that the case could end with only a fine and no criminal charges made against individual Walmart executives.

The probe, which was preceded by an internal Wal-Mart investigation that began a year earlier, has cost the retailer $650 million so far and led the chastened company to repeatedly say compliance with anti-corruption laws is a top priority. The FCPA is a U.S. law that seeks to punish American companies that use bribes in foreign countries.

The Journal reported that as part of the same DOJ probe into Wal-Mart, U.S. investigators found evidence of bribery by the company in India, specifically widespread but relatively small payments made to local officials there. Wal-Mart will probably face U.S. foreign-bribery charges under the FCPA for that, the Journal‘s sources said.