The Center for Public Integrity

The Fiesta Bowl game and its many related events have become a football extravaganza that kicks off the new year for the Phoenix area with national publicity and a hefty  economic boost.

But over the past three years, the Fiesta Bowl has also become the source of continuous embarrassment in the Valley of the Sun, for bowl officials, civic boosters and state legislators, as well. And it isn’t over.

The parade of bad news began in December 2009, when the Arizona Republic exposed the Fiesta Bowl’s scheme of urging employees to make campaign contributions and then illegally reimbursing them. In March 2011, a special investigative committee revealed that the bowl had showered elected officials, mostly legislators, with lavish gifts.

That May, the Fiesta Bowl was fined $1 million by the organization that runs the biggest bowls, and put on one-year probation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker, who was fired, and five other bowl employees have pleaded guilty to involvement in the illegal reimbursements. A lobbyist pleaded guilty to disclosure violations over a trip by legislators.

Now, as the 2013 state legislative session approaches, many Arizonans believe the Legislature has not one Fiesta Bowl scandal, but two.

The first is the tale of freebies: tickets to high-profile football games and bowl-paid jaunts around the country that dozens of legislators took from at least 2003 to 2010, often with family members in tow. The second is whether lawmakers intend to do anything about the behavior that was uncovered, or just carry on as if nothing ever happened.

Controversial lenders that claim to be owned by Indian tribes and offer payday loans over the Internet have agreed to stop practices that federal authorities say deceive borrowers and violate federal laws.

The agreement, filed in federal court, could save borrowers hundreds of dollars on each payday loan.

The Federal Trade Commission last year sued an Overland Park, Kan., company, AMG Services, to recover millions of dollars in revenues, alleging that borrowers were illegally deceived. The business was founded and is still managed by Scott Tucker, best known as an endurance race-car driver who recently won the Baltimore Grand Prix.

The Center for Public Integrity first exposed Tucker’s business practices in an investigation done with CBS News.

The case awaits trial. But the FTC argued that AMG Services was continuing to mislead thousands of new borrowers. Tucker and the representatives from the Indian tribes last month agreed to change the practices that the FTC said were illegal.

Borrowers previously had to give the lenders direct access to their bank accounts and have payments automatically withdraw from their checking account. But instead of a single payoff, the lenders would withdraw interest-only payments for months.

By drawing out the loan payments out, a $300 loan could end up costing the borrower nearly $1,000. The FTC said this was not properly disclosed under the Truth-in-Lending Act.

With the agreement filed in a federal court in Nevada, the lenders will no longer require access to a borrower’s bank account and the loans will be paid off in one payment. The lenders also agreed not to tell borrowers that they could go to jail or be sued if they didn’t pay the loan back.

Taxpayers across the country are subsidizing the manufacturers of assault rifles used in multiple mass killings, including the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. last month.

The U.S. faces the possibility of another recession — the third in 11 years — if President Obama and Congress cannot find a way to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. The one-two combination of massive tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take effect, beginning Jan. 1, would push the unemployment rate back above 9 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

A number of so-called nominee directors of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have connections to military or intelligence activities, an investigation has revealed.

In the past, the British arms giant BAE was the most notorious user of offshore secrecy. The Guardian in 2003 revealed the firm had set up a pair of covert BVI entities.

The undeclared subsidiaries were used to distribute hundreds of millions of pounds in secret payments to get overseas arms contracts.

Today the investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Guardian uncovers the identities of other offshore operators.

Louthean Nelson owns the Gamma Group, a controversial computer surveillance firm employing ex-military personnel. It sells bugging technology to Middle East and south-east Asian governments.

Nelson owns a BVI offshore arm, Gamma Group International Ltd.

Gamma's spyware, which can be used against dissidents, has turned up in the hands of both Egyptian and Bahraini state security police, although Nelson's representative claims this happened inadvertently.

He initially denied to us that Nelson was linked to Gamma, and denied that Nelson owned the anonymous BVI affiliate.

Martin Muench, who has a 15 per cent share in the company's German subsidiary, said he was the group's sole press spokesman, and told us: "Louthean Nelson is not associated with any company by the name of Gamma Group International Ltd. If by chance you are referring to any other Gamma company, then the explanation is the same for each and every one of them."

Britain’s friendly regime of offshore secrecy has tempted an extraordinary array of post-Soviet billionaires to descend on London, sometimes to the sound of gunfire.

These billionaires justify their use of British-controlled secrecy jurisdictions because they say they must protect themselves from corporate predators and political enemies in their home countries.

Vladimir Antonov fled permanently to Britain after his father, Alexander, was gunned down in a Moscow street in 2009. Another associate, German Gorbuntsov, narrowly survived a volley of shots in London last March.

When Antonov bought a luxury yacht in Antibes, the Sea D, he was careful to register its ownership to an anonymous British Virgin Islands (BVI) entity, Danforth Ventures Inc.

He also got his hands on enough cash to try to take over the ailing Swedish car manufacturer Saab, though he did not take control. He did succeed for a while in owning Portsmouth FC, the even more ailing British football club.

Antonov is currently on bail in Britain. Lithuanian authorities are trying to extradite him for allegedly looting their collapsed bank Snoras, which he denies.

The allegation that oligarchs exploit Britain’s offshore secrecy regime to shift assets out of their own countries is not an uncommon one. Another refugee from the law is the Kazakh billionaire Mukhtar Ablyazov, who was last seen in February allegedly heading out of London on a coach to France.

Ablyazov has been sentenced to 22 months in jail for contempt of a UK court as the BTA Bank in Kazakhstan attempts to pursue his maze of offshore assets. The bank’s lawyers claim Ablyazov, who denies it, has made off with an astonishing £4 billion using BVI and Seychelles companies, nominee directors and layers of front-men.

Click through to ICIJ.org to continue reading.