Scandalous story about the chairman of the 2028 Summer Olympics

Three headlines:

[T]he married LA 2028 Olympics chief and music mogul behind Billie Eilish and Coldplay - is a 'serial cheater' who slept with a string of female staff

LA28 Olympics Silent on $350,000 Salary for [Chairman]’s Former Secretary and Alleged Mistress

[Chairman's] Tabloid Scandal Brings Professional Fallout for Agency Owner and L.A. Olympics Chief

"Tom Girardi funneled more than $1 million in gifts and payments to an investigator at the State Bar of California and the investigator’s wife"

LAT:

[The investigator] was fired in 2015 but later sued the agency for wrongful termination and received a $400,000 settlement.

...

Other State Bar employees and members of the agency’s governing board also secretly took gifts and other perks

...

Even when complaints against Girardi were referred outside the agency because of acknowledged conflicts of interest, top bar officials and staffers continued to meddle in their handling

Massachusetts police force has "an extraordinary track record of misconduct"

Boston Globe:

When he first arrived in town in the 1970s, [a] former Stoughton select board member ... recalls, the running joke was that to tell then-police chief ... you were going on vacation was to ensure you returned to a robbed home. ([The chief] would eventually be convicted of knowingly receiving stolen goods.)

In the ‘90s, another Stoughton chief ... was fired after allegations that he used department resources for non-police business and illegally issued a firearms permit to a prominent businessman. A state arbitrator later ruled that only about a third of the charges against [him] were warranted, and that he deserved only a suspension.

By the turn of the century, however, under the leadership of ... a former Stoughton High football player known as a backslapper and politician — those improprieties would come to seem almost quaint.

"Trump E.P.A. Chief 'Endangered Public Safety' by Ordering His Drivers to Speed"

NYT:

Scott Pruitt, while in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Trump administration, repeatedly pressured his federal security officers to drive at excessive and sometimes dangerous speeds on routine trips, with sirens and emergency lights on, because he had a habit of running late, according to a federal report released on Thursday.

The security officers said they knew this was a violation of federal policies and “endangered public safety,” the report said. Among the incidents cited in the report was a 2017 trip in which a special agent drove Mr. Pruitt with the lights and sirens going, in the wrong direction into oncoming traffic, to pick up Mr. Pruitt’s dry cleaning

...

an agency supervisor told the members of Mr. Pruitt’s security detail “to disable/unplug the lights and sirens so they wouldn’t use them because the administrator will still instruct they be used, but the agent can say they don’t work,”

...

now running as a Republican for the United States Senate in Oklahoma

"The Anaheim City Council voted unanimously late Tuesday night to kill the sale of Angel Stadium and the surrounding property"

LAT:

the Angels remain under a lease that binds the team to Angel Stadium through at least 2029.

...

Under the terms of the sale agreement, if Anaheim kills the deal, the city could refund the $50 million [the Angels owner] already has put into escrow, plus up to $5 million in his “transaction costs” and potential legal fees. However, the city’s preliminary legal position is that the alleged fraud might relieve the city of that burden – and could trigger a court to order [the Angels owner]’s company to pay the city’s legal costs.

...

[Anaheim] Councilmen ... all but dared [the Angels owner to sue]. 

The article makes this assertion without qualification:

The city had agreed to a $320-million sale of the 150-acre site, which would have blossomed from an aging stadium surrounded by a sea of parking lots into a modern ballpark anchored amid a residential and retail village, where fans could come early to dine and avoid traffic or live within walking distance of baseball games and other entertainment options.

"Powerful judge in Texas' smallest county...charged with cattle theft"

NBC:

Lawmen came to remote Loving County, Texas, on Friday to arrest the county judge, a former sheriff’s deputy and two ranch hands on one of Texas’ oldest crimes — cattle theft.

...

 the scion of a powerful ranching family

...

For decades, a handful of prominent families in Loving County have feuded bitterly for control of the local government, with the [judge's] finally largely coming out ahead. [He] has served as the judge for more than 15 years. His sister is the county clerk. His cousin’s husband is the county attorney. His nephew is the constable.

...

he presided over a period of unprecedented growth, as fracking boomed in the Permian Basin, feeding money into the county’s coffers

"What I learned listening to secret recordings of the agency trying to investigate [New York's] lifeguard corps"

A depressing follow-up to last year's remarkable story alleging decades of criminality by New York lifeguards.

"70 young athletes were allegedly abused by" the Olympic team doctor after the FBI was first notified of allegations

LAT:

The 119-page report by the Justice Department’s inspector general paints a damning portrait of how the FBI mishandled serious allegations against Nassar, a team doctor for the U.S. Olympic team, USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University.

...

The report detailed a string of errors by ... the special agent in charge of the Indianapolis office, who has since been examined for possible prosecution by the Justice Department’s Office of Public Integrity. Prosecutors declined in September to bring a case against [the agent], the report said. The inspector general concluded that [the agent] had made false statements to investigators about an interview he had conducted with [one of the gymnasts].

In the midst of the investigation, the inspector general found, [the agent] also discussed job opportunities with ... the head of USA Gymnastics. The inspector general said [the agent] had made false statements to investigators about those job discussions and his handling of the Nassar allegations.

"A subsequent investigation by the Thai Department of Special Investigations uncovered a lifestyle of what appeared to be mind-blowing decadence"

BBC:

After a succession of scandals, people are openly talking about a crisis of Buddhism in Thailand. Numbers of ordained monks have been falling steeply in recent years, and many smaller village temples are unable to support themselves financially.

The body which is supposed to govern the Buddhist clergy is the Supreme Sangha Council, but this comprises a group of very elderly monks, and until this year had not had a properly functioning Supreme Patriarch for more than a decade. It has proved ineffective.

...

The government has now introduced a law requiring temples, which collectively accumulate $3-4bn (£2-3bn) in donations every year, to publicise their financial records. It is also talking about introducing a new, digital ID card for monks to ensure those tainted by malpractice cannot be ordained again.

...

Wirapol fled to the US. It took four years for the Thai authorities to secure his extradition

"Yankees Charity Neglects Stadium’s Neighbors"

NYT:

In the summer of 2006, when the Yankees broke ground on a gleaming new stadium in the South Bronx, they offered an olive branch to a community furious that more than 25 acres of treasured public parkland had been seized for the project. The Yankees created a charity, called the New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund, which it intended to distribute almost $40 million in cash grants and sports equipment, along with 600,000 baseball tickets, to community organizations in the borough over four decades.

Ten years later, however, an examination of the fund’s public financial records and interviews with community members and a former administrator of the fund show that it has operated with little oversight or public accountability, neglecting those who live near the stadium and instead sending money to other, often wealthier parts of the Bronx that were not affected by the construction.

"Trump lawyer's firm steered millions in donations to family members"

"Documents obtained by the Guardian show Sekulow that month approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family and their businesses."

"How did Cuomo make $783,000 on memoir that sold 3,200 copies?"

TBN:

The Wall Street Journal, which like HarperCollins is owned by News Corp., in 2014 – under the headline “Betting Big on Cuomo’s Memoir” – first reported that the publisher was having an initial print run of 200,000 copies of the Cuomo book.

The governor made just shy of $168,000 for his state job. Beyond the book royalties, he also reported $445 in interest income and $33,184 in dividend income from a New York City bank that handles his investments.

11 security cameras removed before disappearance of marker placed in 1936 to commemorate "the bloodless revolution that installed democracy in Thailand four years earlier"

"There was construction to improve traffic signaling, so the cameras were taken down"

"$43 Million In Cash Found In Empty Nigerian Apartment"

ZH:

The anti-corruption unit redundantly added that according to "preliminary findings the funds are suspected to be proceeds of unlawful activity" although no arrest have been made yet. Earlier in the week, the agency discovered around 250 million naira in cash ($817,000) in a Lagos market and a further 448 million naira cash ($1.5 million) at a shopping plaza.

These gains have been credited to a whistleblowing policies launched in December by Nigeria's finance minister. Whistleblowers can now anonymously provide information through a secure portal, if the information leads to the recovery of stolen public funds, the whistleblower is entitled to between 2.5%-5% of the total money recovered.

...

It was unclear how much of the funds were Saudi kickbacks to the Niger Delta Avengers for singlehandedly keeping the price of oil levitating for several months in 2016.

"Compton's Former Deputy Treasurer Accused Of Stealing More Than $3.7 Million From City"

LAi:

According to the criminal complaint, Galvan would take anywhere between $200 to $8,000 a day by skimming money off funds from parking tickets, business license fees and other city services.

The signs, apparently, were evident. According to a release from the Department of Justice, one of Galvan's supervisor's said that he went from driving an "old Toyota" to driving an Audi sedan. The supervisor also said that Galvan had claimed he'd purchased a home in La Mirada just to demolish it and build a new one.

"New questions, including human trafficking concerns, broadside N.J. basketball power"

NJ:

At least eight international boys and girls basketball players have shown up seemingly out of nowhere to play for Paterson Eastside High School's powerhouse teams over the past four years, broadening state investigations and drawing the attention of federal agencies, NJ Advance Media has learned.

...

The international pipeline at Eastside appears to have begun with the girls team, according to interviews with adults who work to place international players at high schools in the United States. Like the boys squad, the Lady Ghosts have won three straight Passaic County Tournament championships as well as two state titles the past four seasons.

"A.T.F. Filled Secret Bank Account With Millions From Shadowy Cigarette Sales"

NYT:

Working from an office suite behind a Burger King in southern Virginia, operatives used a web of shadowy cigarette sales to funnel tens of millions of dollars into a secret bank account. They weren’t known smugglers, but rather agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The operation, not authorized under Justice Department rules, gave agents an off-the-books way to finance undercover investigations and pay informants without the usual cumbersome paperwork and close oversight, according to court records and people close to the operation.

...

The scheme relied on phony shipments of snack food disguised as tobacco. The agents were experts: Their job was to catch cigarette smugglers, so they knew exactly how it was done.

"Is China on a collision course with world football’s governing body?"

TC:

This raises a broader concern about multiple ownership and conflicts of interest. Indeed, reliable reports indicate that the English Premier League has hired investigators to examine China’s portfolio of English club acquisitions for connections to the government. Standards of governance within China are often opaque, an issue compounded when the state is involved and the country’s investors are moving capital across international boundaries.

Ideally, FIFA should intervene to provide guidance and leadership. The problem is, football’s world governing body appears to be rather in thrall to China at the moment.

The organisation’s scandals of recent years have mired it in financial difficulty, something Chinese property group Wanda admits it took advantage of

"S.F. deputy charged with giving gun to felon whom she had relationship with in jail, prosecutors say"

LAT:

A San Francisco sheriff’s deputy has been accused of staging the theft of her department-issued gun, submitting bogus insurance claims and handing the weapon over to a former inmate with whom she had had an intimate jailhouse relationship.

...

a 20-year member of the Sheriff’s Department

"An ICE agent who’s already pleaded guilty to taking bribes allegedly drove a Korean supper club out of business in exchange for free food and drinks from a rival joint"

TDB:

A Las Vegas restaurant allegedly bribed a crooked federal agent to raid their rival restaurant, the alleged victims claim.

Club Yamang and Club Sonagi were two Korean supper clubs, which offered food and music, often accompanied by attractive hostesses. But the restaurants’ competition turned ugly in 2013

...

The former ICE agent previously admitted to accepting bribes in December 2015, when he pleaded guilty to accepting thousands of dollars in cash from a Korean businessman accused of trafficking a woman into the U.S. as a “sex slave” without her consent.